Anyone Seriously Believe This Rhubarb? (The message, not numbers.)

Your second point is pretty much the one I was making.

Effectively the market-research people are missing or seeing but glossing over the fact that Microsoft does not like choice and intends to deny us any. This not a State service that can only be supplied sensibly as a "monopoly", but a cross between business / academic tool and domestic luxury-goods - we have more choice in the fruit & veg section of the typical supermarket, and that's very limited when you look carefully.  

To companies like it, the customer primarily serves the supplier, not vice-versa. Whilst this could be levelled against any business, usually companies rely on offering choices and allowing for satisfied customers to be happy with what they have. It's a two-way, rather symbiotic, relationship, and one nurtured by good quality at fair prices.  

It's also nurtured by being able to accommodate customers with older versions or models of the goods: MS thinks anything over 3 years old should be rendered obsolete and useless.

A huge monopoly like MS can afford to tell us what we will have and to hell with our wishes and needs; and it is large enough now not to worry about quality because it has insufficient competition to consider.

WIN 7 is popular because we have no real choice, and when MS refuses to support or protect it any longer as it doubtless will in the next year or so, we will have no choice but WIN-10, costly Apple or the technical difficulties of Linux, Open Office etc.

Presently, from memory, WIN-10 in the UK costs something like £120 for the basic form, somewhere near £150 for the full version. It was free until June? 2017, then free only via one or two odd loop-holes including one called "Assistive Technology", whatever that is. It is now charged for irrespective of use. These are one-off payments, but it would not surprise me if MS Windows and the Office applications follow Adobe and Win-Zip in becoming rental-only at far greater cost with no better guarantee of practicality and quality. 
  
(UK - Adobe & Win-Zip each around £30/month so  ~£60/month open-ended for just two accessory programmes you might use only occasionally).

Quality? My ISP's home-page always displays a list of links to up to 10 of its most popular news items, and these always include at least one to solving WIN-10 problems. MS cannot care less, or it would have ensured WIN-10 worked properly before publication, is easy to install and reliable in service on any standard PC connected to the Internet.

(Always use Custom, not default automatic, Install. The latter gives MS full, unfettered commercial access to all your Internet use, and assumes using the default installation authorises such access. Custom won't necessarily stop your information being exploited by all and sundry, but I like to make things as awkward as I can for the parasites.)

So my point was that NetMarketShare was not reflecting genuine customer choice, but a monopoly enforcing its own singe choice.

I'm not sure where you spotted the incorrect plural, but BT Internet's authors are not the most literate of people. Well, they do work in advertising, IT & telecommunications, so that's only to be expected.

Support for 7 ends January 2020.  I've never allowed Windows Update.  I choose the standalone updates I want to install (e.g. the wannacry virus update).

An oss is just a donkey's receptacle. :P