Desktop OS

While it's no major news that Windows dominates the desktop OS market, the

interesting thing is in the version. The winner of Users' Choice award for 2009

is Windows XP, and not Vista, even though the latter has been around for a long

time. XP enjoyed the highest current ownership amongst our respondents, had the

highest top of mind recall, and even the highest loyalty relative to other OS

brands. The top of mind recall for Windows Vista was pretty low at just 5%. On a

relative scale though, Vista enjoyed the highest percentage of other brand

owners shifting in to it.

However, amongst our respondents, the Linux variants didn't have sufficient

votes for us to pass any judgment. Coming back to Windows, XP led the way across

all the industries we covered in our survey this time. Windows Vista however,

was the strongest in the services industry, followed by communication and media

industry as well as the process manufacturing industries.

Windows XP enjoyed the highest brand loyalty amongst its existing owners at

55%. Windows Vista on the other hand, enjoyed only 31% loyal owners, and the

remaining 69% said they were not sure which OS to shift to or had no plans of

shifting. Maybe things will change now that Windows 7 has been launched. Let's

see how well does the new OS fare next year.