Microsoft’s Windows is by far the most popular operating system (OS) in the South African desktop market, but Apple’s MacOS has seen greater adoption in the country over the past decade.
This is according to the market share data of the most important desktop operating systems of GlobalStats statistics counter.
The platform’s latest data estimates that Windows was running on 61.96% of South African computers in August 2022, while MacOS was on 8.63%.
This would suggest a drastic drop of more than 30% in Microsoft’s OS market share, while Apple’s grew by more than 5% over the same period.
Linux was the third most popular operating system by far, with a 1.39% share, followed by the block’s newest child – Google’s ChromeOS – with 0.31%.
The graph below shows the market share of the largest desktop operating systems in South Africa as of August 2022, according to data from GlobalStats.
Although the numbers from Apple, Linux, and ChromeOS seem realistic, StatCounter’s data includes a strange anomaly that appears to have entered its data and severely affected Windows’ market share.
An “unknown” operating system appeared in the second half of 2015, shortly after the launch of Windows 10 in July of the same year.
Interestingly, its consecutive increases and decreases had an almost direct opposite effect on Windows’ market share.
Between August 2009 and August 2014, Windows market share in South Africa fell steadily from 95.19% to 91.29%, less than four percentage points in five years.
This seemed to correlate with the rise in adoption of Apple’s MacOS over the same period, which increased by 3.7 percentage points over the same period.
But between August 2014 and August 2015, Windows’ market share fell by 4.96 percentage points in one year, while the share of the unknown new operating system rose from 0% to 5.02%.
The following year, Windows’ market share dropped by a rather incredible 10.17 points, while the unknown OS grew by 9.85 points in the same time.
Over those two years, MacOS increased its share by about 0.85 percentage points, while Linux adoption fell by 0.13%.
Assuming Unknown is also Windows
It’s unlikely that there is another popular desktop operating system in South Africa not accounted for in the StatCounter data.
This would suggest that the data from this new “unknown” operating system might actually relate to some versions of Windows 10.
This is also confirmed by the fact that large monthly fluctuations in the market share of Windows and unknown operating systems often occurred during the months when Microsoft rolled out important updates.
Counting it with Windows market share seems to show a more realistic move in Windows market share – from 91.29% in August 2014 to 89.63% in August 2022.
The chart below shows how the desktop operating system market share changed between August 2013 and August 2022, assuming StatCounter’s “unknown operating system” is actually specific versions of Windows 10.
Looking at specific versions of Windows, it seems that South Africans have been reluctant to upgrade to Windows 11.
In August 2022, only about 13.81% of users were running the new operating system.
Interestingly, that’s less than double the users running 13-year-old Windows 7, which accounts for 7.16% of Windows’ market share.
Windows 10 still holds a decisive lead. After starting the year at 83.22%, it accounted for 74.95% of Windows versions on South African computers in August 2022.
The much hated Windows 8.1 and even more hated Windows 8 claimed 2.75% and 0.93% market share, while the old favorite Windows XP still held with around 0.26%.
The graph below shows the market share of each version of Windows in South Africa as of August 2022, according to GlobalStats.