Usage share of operating systems


The usage share of an operating system is the percentage of computers running that operating system. These statistics are estimates as wide scale OS usage data is difficult to obtain and measure. Reliable primary sources are limited and data collection methodology is not formally agreed. Currently devices connected to the internet allow for web data collection to approximately measure OS usage.
, Android, which uses the Linux kernel, is the world's most popular operating system with 38.94% of the global market, followed by Windows with 29.99%, iOS with 15.66%, macOS with 2.14%, and other operating systems with 10.78%. This is for all device types excluding embedded devices.
  • For smartphones and other mobile devices, Android has 72% market share, and Apple's iOS has 28%.
  • For desktop computers and laptops, Microsoft Windows has 71%, followed by Apple's macOS at 16%, unknown operating systems at 8%, desktop Linux at 4%, then Google's ChromeOS at 2%.
  • For tablets, Apple's iPadOS has 52% share and Android has 48% worldwide.
  • For the top 500 most powerful supercomputers, Linux distributions have had 100% of the marketshare since 2017.
  • The global server operating system marketshare has Linux leading with a 63.1% marketshare, followed by Windows, Unix and other operating systems.
Linux is also most used for web servers, and the most common Linux distribution is Ubuntu, followed by Debian. Linux has almost caught up with the second-most popular OS, macOS, in some regions, such as in South America, and in Asia it's at 6.4% vs 9.7% for macOS. In the US, ChromeOS is third at 5.5%, followed by Linux at 4.3%, but can arguably be combined into a single number 9.8%.
The most numerous type of device with an operating system are embedded systems. Not all embedded systems have operating systems, instead running their application code on the "bare metal"; of those that do have operating systems, a high percentage are standalone or do not have a web browser, which makes their usage share difficult to measure. Some operating systems used in embedded systems are more widely used than some of those mentioned above; for example, modern Intel microprocessors contain an embedded management processor running a version of the Minix operating system.

Worldwide device shipments

Shipments do not necessarily translate to sales to consumers, therefore suggesting the numbers indicate popularity and/or usage could be misleading. Not only do smartphones sell in higher numbers than PCs, but also a lot more by dollar value, with the gap only projected to widen, to well over double.
According to Gartner, the following is the worldwide device shipments by operating system from 2012 to 2016, which includes smartphones, tablets, laptops and PCs together.
SourceYearTotalAndroidiOS/macOSWindowsOthers
Gartner2019
Gartner2017
Gartner201610.63% 11.2%
Gartner201554.16% 12.37%
macOS = 1%		11.79% 21.66%
Gartner201448.61%11.04%14.0%26.34%
Gartner201338.51%10.12%13.98%37.41%
Gartner201222.8%9.6%15.62%51.98%

On 27 January 2016, Paul Thurrott summarized the operating system market, the day after Apple announced "one billion devices":
In 2018, Apple stopped revealing unit sales in its reports. Since 2018, the company have been publishing only revenues per device models which, nonetheless, allowed the analysers to extrapolate the unit sales from the model revenues by applying the wholesale device prices. Other hardware manufacturers usually do not report unit sales.

PC shipments

For 2015, 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.
Microsoft backed away from their goal of one billion Windows 10 devices in three years and reported on 26 September 2016 that Windows 10 was running on over 400 million devices, and in March 2019, on more than 800 million.
In May 2020, Gartner predicted further decline in all market segments for 2020 due to COVID-19, predicting a decline of 13.6% for all devices. while the "Work from Home Trend Saved PC Market from Collapse", with only a decline of 10.5% predicted for PCs. However, in the end, according to Gartner, PC shipments grew 10.7% in the 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." Chromebooks sold more than Apple's Macs worldwide in pandemic year 2020.
According to the Catalyst group, the year 2021 had record high PC shipments with total shipments of 341 million units, 15% higher than 2020 and 27% higher than 2019, while being the largest shipment total since 2012.
According to Gartner, worldwide PC shipments declined by 16.2% in 2022, the largest annual decrease since the mid-1990s, due to geopolitical, economic, and supply chain challenges.
In 2024 and 2025, due to lower adoption of Windows 11 and Microsoft ending its support to Windows 10, the number of PCs shipped with pre-installed Windows OS dropped. Pundits attribute the low Windows 11 acceptance to its steep hardware requirements and especially the TPM 2.0 ready chipset requirement and the 2024 CrowdStrike-related IT outages. Meanwhile, the macOS device market share in PC device shipments increased to new heights, with improved numbers seen for Linux devices too. In Q3 2025, the macOS pre-installed device shipments increased by 14.9% year-over-year, while the overall PC-shipments increased only by 8.1%, in Q2 2025, it grew 21.4% YoY while the global PC-shipments increased only by 6.5%, and in Q1 2025, it grew 7% YoY while the global PC-shipments increased by 4.8%.

Tablet computers shipments

In 2015, eMarketer estimated at the beginning of the year that the tablet installed base would hit one billion for the first time. At the end of the year, because of cheap tabletsnot counted by all analyststhat goal was met as:
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.
SourceYearAndroidiOSWindowsOthers
Strategy AnalyticsQ2 202249%38%11%2%
Statista202059.4%29.8%10.21%0.59%
Strategy Analytics201568%22%10%<0.1%
Gartner201361.9%36.0%2.1%<0.1%
Gartner201245.8%52.8%1.0%0.3%

Gartner excludes some devices from their tablet shipment statistic and includes them in a different category called "premium ultramobiles" with screen sizes of more than 10" inches. In contrast, IDC uses five device groups within the umbrella 'Personal Computing Devices' or PCD, of them 'Detachable Tablets' and 'Slate Tablets' are included in their 'tablet' statistics, while the other three groups 'Desktop', 'Notebook' and 'Workstation' devices are included in their 'PC shipment' numbers.

Smartphone shipments

There are more mobile phone owners than toothbrush owners, with mobile phones the fastest growing technology in history. There are a billion more active mobile phones in the world than people, explained by the fact that some people have more than one, such as an extra for work. All the phones have an operating system, but not all of them are smartphones with an OS capable of running modern applications. In 2018, 3.1 billion smartphones and tablets were in use across the world.
On 28 May 2015, Google announced that there were 1.4 billion Android users and 1 billion Google play users active during that month. This changed to 2 billion monthly active users in May 2017.
By late 2016, Android had been said to be "killing" Apple's iOS market share. Gartner's press release stated: "Apple continued its downward trend with a decline of 7.7 percent in the second quarter of 2016", which is their decline, based on absolute number of units, that underestimates the relative decline, along with the misleading "1.7 Percentage point|percent " decline. That point decline means an 11.6% relative decline.
Although by units sold Apple was declining in the late 2010s, the company was 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.
In May 2019, the biggest smartphone companies were Samsung, Huawei and Apple, respectively.
In November 2024, a new competitor to Android and iOS emerged, when sales of the Huawei Mate 70 started with the all-new operating system HarmonyOS NEXT installed on the flagship device. Since 2025 all new Huawei devices have exclusively been sold with the HarmonyOS NEXT operating system, creating a third player on the market for smartphone operating systems.
In the first quarter of 2025, Huawei, which at that time almost exclusively sold smartphones with its HarmonyOS NEXT operating system, overtook Chinese company Xiaomi to become the best-selling smartphone brand in China, with a 19 per cent market share.
The following table shows worldwide smartphone sales to end users by operating systems, as measured by Gartner, International Data Corporation and others:
SourceMethodYear/quarterAndroid
HarmonyOS NEXT
iOSOthers
CounterpointUnits sold per quarter2025 Q379%4%17%0%
CounterpointUnits sold per quarter2025 Q279%4%17%0%
CounterpointUnits sold per quarter2025 Q176%5%19%0%
CounterpointUnits sold per quarter2024 Q474%4%22%0%
CounterpointUnits sold per quarter2024 Q380%4%16%0%
CounterpointUnits sold per quarter2024 Q280%4%16%0%
CounterpointUnits sold per quarter2024 Q177%4%19%0%
CounterpointUnits sold per quarter2023 Q474%3%23%0%
GartnerUnits sold per year202184.3%16.7%0.0%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2021 Q488.1%21.9%0%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2021 Q385.8%14.2%0%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2021 Q285.0%15.0%0%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2021 Q184.5%15.5%0%
GartnerUnits sold per year202085.2%14.8%0.0%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2020 Q479.2%20.8%0.0%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2020 Q388.9%11.1%0.0%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2020 Q287.1%12.9%0%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2020 Q186.3%13.7%0.0%
GartnerUnits sold per year201987.4%12,6%0.0%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2019 Q482.9%17.1%0.0%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2019 Q389.5%10.5%0.0%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2019 Q289.5%10.5%0.0%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2019 Q188.1%11.9%0.0%
GartnerUnits sold per year201886.6%13,4%0.0%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2018 Q484.2%15.8%0.0%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2018 Q288.1%11.9%0.0%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2018 Q185.9%14.1%0.0%
GartnerUnits sold per year201785.9%14.0%0.1%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2017 Q186.1%13.7%0.2%

SourceMethodYear/quarterAndroid
BlackBerry
iOSSymbianWindows
Others
GartnerUnits sold per year201684.8%14.4%0.8%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2016 Q481.7%0.0%17.9%0.3%0.1%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2016 Q387.8%0.1%11.5%0.4%0.2%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2016 Q286.2%0.1%12.9%0.6%0.2%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2016 Q184.1%0.2%14.8%0.7%0.2%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2015 Q480.7%0.2%17.7%1.1%0.2%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2015 Q282.2%0.3%14.6%2.5%0.4%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2014 Q476.0%0.5%20.4%2.8%0.4%
Strategy AnalyticsUnits shipped in quarter2014 Q381.3%1.0%13.4%4.1%0.2%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2014 Q283.8%0.7%12.2%2.8%0.5%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2013 Q279.0%2.7%14.2%0.3%3.3%0.6%
GartnerUnits sold in quarter2013 Q174.4%3.0%18.2%0.6%2.9%1.0%
International Data CorporationUnits shipped in quarter2013 Q175.0%2.9%17.3%0.6%3.2%0.0%