Despite of widespread criticism, Microsoft Windows Vista operating system (OS) is continuing to gain popularity, according to estimates. In fact, Vista not only eats the dinner of Windows XP, but also manages to bite Mac OS share.

According to Net Applications, a provider of web tools, the share of Microsoft Windows Vista OS among computers used to browse the Internet was 4.52%, up a little less than a point from the previous month. The market share of Windows XP was 81.94%, Windows 2000 held 4% share, MacOS (PowerPC-based) was used in 3.52% of the cases, whereas modern MacOS (Intel-based) had 2.48% market share. Other operating systems, such as Linux, captured 3.54% of the market.

It is interesting to note that all the OSes, but Windows Vista and Linux, lost some share in June to the two competitors. Nevertheless, the market share of Microsoft’s latest operating system is still lower compared to Mac OS: 4.52% vs. 6%. But the trend is more favourable for Vista, as in June it was up from 3.74%, while Mac OS was down from 6.46%.

In mid-May, 2007, the software giant Microsoft Corp. has revealed that the company has sold 40 million copies of Microsoft Windows Vista operating system throughout the world.

It was unclear at press time how many computer systems Net Applications tracked in June, 2007.