Windows 7 gets 4% market share in 2 weeks; pirated sales at Rs. 50 lakh in India

By Mihir Patkar | Updated on 04-Nov-2009

04 Nov 2009 11:30

There’s some good news for Microsoft today. According to OSNews, the company’s latest operating system, Windows 7, has already garnered almost 4 per cent market share since its launch on October 20.

The figures, released by analysts NetApplications, state that before its release, the Release Candidate and Beta versions of Win7 had got a market share of around 1.5-2 per cent, which has steadily risen in the past 10 days. Compared to Win7’s 3.67% as of November 1, Mac OSX had a market share figure of around 5.67% and Linux came in at 0.96%. Windows Vista and XP still dominate the market.

“The early adoption of Windows 7 looks very strong, and I don’t believe Vista enjoyed the same early success,” said Vince Vizzaccaro, an executive vice president at Net Applications, “Plus, we’ve seen surges the past two weekend days, and Windows has historically seen much higher usage market share on weekdays than on weekends.”

What this statement indicates is that home users are opting for Windows 7. Usage on weekdays spikes due to the use of Windows at offices, whereas weekend usage is largely consisting of homes.

Pirated Windows 7 sells Rs. 50 lakhs worth of copies in one city in India

Want to know just how big the piracy market is in India? In the city of Lucknow alone, which isn’t even among the five biggest cities in the country, pirated copies of Windows 7 have generated estimated revenues of over Rs. 50 lakhs already!

The Times of India is reporting this mind-boggling number based on the estimate of shopkeepers at the local grey market, where almost 50,000 DVDs of the new operating system have been sold since its launch, at prices varying from Rs. 40 to Rs. 250. Windows 7 is officially sold in India at a price range of Rs. 6,000 to Rs. 11,000, depending on the version.

Amidst a long article, one thing stuck out like a sore thumb: the bootleggers believed they were not doing anything illegal! “We are not doing anything illegal as everything is available on the Internet,” said a shopkeeper not willing to be named. “We are only transferring and supplying to buyers who include students, professionals and even big business houses.”

Quite something, isn’t it?

If you haven’t seen it already, you can check out our ongoing massive Windows 7 review series here.