Microsoft Corp. has been given a boost as it kicks off the New Year with news that its Windows 10 operating system has finally surpassed Windows 7 in the desktop popularity stakes.

That’s according to Net Applications’ latest report, which shows that 39.2 percent of all desktop machines are now using the three-year-old Windows 10 OS.

That puts it ahead of Windows 7, which is running on 36.9 percent of all desktops, the web analytics firm said. Windows 10 apparently surpassed Windows 7 in December, having trailed it closely throughout 2018, the firm added.

If Windows 10’s sudden surge in popularity seems like a case of déjà vu, that’s probably because another web analytics firm, StatCounter, reported Microsoft’s latest OS had surpassed Windows 7 way back in January 2018. However, the two companies use quite different methodologies to count desktop market share, with Net Applications focusing on the number of daily unique users, and StatCounter more concerned with total traffic.

In any case, the latest numbers can only be good news for Microsoft, which rather embarrassingly had to retreat from its original goal of having Windows 10 running on 1 billion active devices by the end of 2018. The company never really looked like it would hit that target, but according to its most recent update on Windows 10 adoption, the OS is now running on some 700 million machines, which is still not to be sniffed at. In total, about 1.5 billion machines in the world are running some version of Windows.

Windows 10’s continued growth can be put down to slow but steady enterprise adoption. Microsoft’s Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said in October that more than half of its enterprise device installed base was running the latest OS.

It’s expected that Windows 7’s popularity will continue to shrink in the coming year, as the older OS nears its end of life. Microsoft will stop providing extended support and security updates on Jan. 14, 2020, though business users have the option to pay for continued security updates after that.

Windows 8.1, the much-derided successor to Windows 7, will continue to receive updates and security patches until 2023, after which Windows 10 will be the only supported version of Microsoft’s platform.

Photo: Miguel Angel Aranda (Viper)/Flickr