Is a complete operating system that works on desktops, laptops, and some tablets.

The usage share of operating systems is the percentage of computing devices that run each operating system [OS] at any particular time. All such figures are necessarily estimates because data about operating system share is difficult to obtain. There are few reliable primary sources and no agreed methodologies for its collection. Operating systems are used in numerous device types, from embedded devices without a screen through to supercomputers.

Most device types that people interact with access the web, so using web access statistics helps compare the usage share of operating systems across most device types, and also the usage share of operating systems used for the same types.

As of November 2022, Android, an operating system using the Linux kernel, is the world's most-used operating system when judged by web use. It has 42% of the global market, followed by Windows with 30%, Apple iOS with 18%, macOS with 6%, then [desktop] Linux at 1.0% also using the Linux kernel.[1][2] These numbers do not include embedded devices or game consoles.

• For smartphones and other pocket-sized devices, Android leads with 71% market share, and Apple's iOS has 28%.[3]
• For desktop and laptop computers, Windows is the most used at 76%, followed by Apple's macOS at 16%, and Linux-based operating systems at 5% [i.e. "desktop Linux" at 2.6%, plus Google's ChromeOS at 2.4%, in the US up to 6.2%].[4]
• For tablets, Apple's iPadOS has 50.7% and Android has 49.18% worldwide[5] [Android is though more used in vast majority of countries;[6] and on occational days Android measures ahead or even, globally[7]].

For the above devices, smartphones and other pocket-sized devices make up 58%, desktops and laptops 40%, and tablets 2.0%.[8] Smartphones have the most use in virtually all countries, including in the US at 51% there with PC operating systems [including Windows] down to 46%.[9][10]

• Linux has completely dominated the supercomputer field since 2017, with all of the top 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world running a Linux distribution. Linux is also most used for [web] servers, and then most often Ubuntu used, the most common Linux distribution.

The most numerous type of device with an operating system are embedded systems. These use varied operating systems; a high percentage are standalone or do not have a web browser, which makes their usage share difficult to measure. Hypothetically some operating systems used in embedded systems are more popular than the ones mentioned above.

Worldwide device shipments[edit]

In May 2020, Gartner predicted a decline in all market segments for 2020 [from already declining market in 2019] due to COVID-19, predicting a decline by 13.6% for all devices, while "Work from Home Trend Saved PC Market from Collapse", with them only predicting to decline by 10.5% for PCs. However, in the end according to Gartner, PC shipments grew "10.7% in Fourth Quarter of 2020 and [...] reached 275 million units in 2020, a 4.8% increase from 2019 and the highest growth in ten years." Apple in 4th place for PCs had the largest growth in shipments for a company in Q4 of 31.3%, while "the fourth quarter of 2020 was another remarkable period of growth for Chromebooks, with shipments increasing around 200% year over year to reach 11.7 million units. In 2020, Chromebook shipments increased over 80% to total nearly 30 million units, largely due to demand from the North American education market."[12] Chromebooks sold more than Apple's Macs worldwide.

According to Gartner, the following is the worldwide device shipments [referring to wholesale] by operating system, which includes smartphones, tablets, laptops and PCs together.

Shipments [to stores] do not mean sales to consumers [not necessarily in the year of shipment], therefore suggesting the numbers indicate popularity and/or usage could be misleading. Not only do smartphones sell in higher numbers than traditional PCs – but also as a whole a lot more, by dollar value – with the gap only projected to widen, to well over double.[19]

For 2015 [and earlier], Gartner reports for "the year, worldwide PC shipments declined for the fourth consecutive year, which started in 2012 with the launch of tablets" with an 8% decline in PC sales for 2015 [not including cumulative decline in sales over the previous years].[20] Gartner includes Macs [running macOS] in PC sales numbers [but not e.g. iPads and Androids], and they individually had a slight increase in sales in 2015.

On 28 May 2015, Google announced that there were 1.4 billion Android users and 1 billion Google play users active during that month.[21][22] This changed to 2 billion monthly active users in May 2017.[23][24]

On 27 January 2016, Paul Thurrott summarized the operating system market, the day after Apple announced "one billion devices":

Apple's "active installed base" is now one billion devices. [..] Granted, some of those Apple devices were probably sold into the market place years ago. But that 1 billion figure can and should be compared to the numbers Microsoft touts for Windows 10 [200 million, most recently] or Windows more generally [1.5 billion active users, a number that hasn’t moved, magically, in years], and that Google touts for Android [over 1.4 billion, as of September]. My understanding of iOS is that the user base was previously thought to be around 800 million strong, and when you factor out Macs and other non-iOS Apple devices, that's probably about right. But as you can see, there are three big personal computing platforms.

— Paul Thurrott[25]

Microsoft backed away from their goal of one billion Windows 10 devices in three years [or "by the middle of 2018"][26] and reported on 26 September 2016 that Windows 10 was running on over 400 million devices,[27] and in March 2019 on more than 800 million.[28]

By late 2016, Android had been explained to be "killing" Apple's iOS market share [i.e. its declining sales of smartphones, not just relatively but also by number of units, when the whole market is increasing] with

the gap between the two is growing ever larger all the time.

According to Gartner, Android now boasts a global market share of 86.2 percent. Apple's iOS is a long way behind with a market share of just 12.9 percent. The rest may as well not even exist [..]

These figures, which cover the second quarter of 2016, show that Android has actually increased its market share by 4 percent over the last year. All other operating systems are down, with iOS losing 1.7 percent [..]

I think it's fair to declare Android the winner in the mobile operating [system] wars at this point.

— makeuseof.com[29]

As of 9 May 2019, the biggest smartphone companies [by market share] were Samsung, Huawei and Apple, respectively.[30]

Gartner's own press release said, "Apple continued its downward trend with a decline of 7.7 percent in the second quarter of 2016",[31] which is their decline, based on absolute number of units, that underestimates the relative decline [with the market increasing], along with the misleading "1.7 percent [point]" decline. That point decline means an 11.6% relative decline [from 14.6% down to 12.9%].

Although in units sold Apple is declining, they are almost the only vendor making any profit in the smartphone sector from hardware sales alone. In Q3 2016 for example, they captured 103.6% of the market profits.[32]

There are more mobile phone owners than toothbrush owners,[33] with mobile phones the fastest growing technology in history.[citation needed] There are a billion more active mobile phones in the world than people [and many more than 10 billion sold so far with less than half still in use], explained by the fact that some people have more than one, such as an extra for work.[34] All the phones have an operating system, but only a fraction of them are smartphones with an OS capable of running modern applications. Currently 3.1 billion smartphones and tablets are in use across the world [with tablets, a small fraction of the total, generally running the same operating systems, Android or iOS, the latter being more popular on tablets. In 2019, a variant of iOS called iPadOS built for iPad tablets was released].

Tablet computers shipments[edit]

In 2015, eMarketer estimated at the beginning of the year that the tablet installed base would hit one billion[35] for the first time [with China's use at 328 million, which Google Play doesn't serve or track, and the United States's use second at 156 million]. At the end of the year, because of cheap tablets – not counted by all analysts – that goal was met [even excluding cumulative sales of previous years] as:

Sales quintupled to an expected 1 billion units worldwide this year, from 216 million units in 2014, according to projections from the Envisioneering Group.

While that number is far higher than the 200-plus million units globally projected by research firms IDC, Gartner and Forrester, Envisioneering analyst Richard Doherty says the rival estimates miss all the cheap Asian knockoff tablets that have been churning off assembly lines.[..]

Forrester says its definition of tablets "is relatively narrow" while IDC says it includes some tablets by Amazon — but not all.[..]

The top tech purchase of the year continued to be the smartphone, with an expected 1.5 billion sold worldwide, according to projections from researcher IDC. Last year saw some 1.2 billion sold.[..]

Computers didn’t fare as well, despite the introduction of Microsoft's latest software upgrade, Windows 10, and the expected but not realized bump it would provide for consumers looking to skip the upgrade and just get a new computer instead.

Some 281 million PCs were expected to be sold, according to IDC, down from 308 million in 2014. Folks tend to be happy with the older computers and keep them for longer, as more of our daily computing activities have moved to the smartphone.[..]

While Windows 10 got good reviews from tech critics, only 11% of the 1-billion-plus Windows user base opted to do the upgrade, according to Microsoft. This suggests Microsoft has a ways to go before the software gets "hit" status. Apple's new operating system El Capitan has been downloaded by 25% of Apple's user base, according to Apple.

This conflicts with statistics from IDC that say the tablet market contracted by 10% in 2015 with only Huawei, ranked fifth, with big gains, more than doubling their share; for fourth quarter 2015, the five biggest vendors were the same except that Amazon Fire tablets ranked third worldwide, new on the list, enabled by its not quite tripling of market share to 7.9%, with its Fire OS Android-derivative.[37]