14 DAY TRIAL // Windows XP was launched no less than 15 years ago, but shockingly, it continues to be one of the most-used desktop operating systems around the world, and statistics show that it still won’t go away too easily in the coming years.
Support for Windows XP ended on April 8, 2014, and despite Microsoft’s warnings, users who were still running it at that time refused to upgrade. And what’s worse, many are still doing it these days, despite the fact that Microsoft launched Windows 10 and pushed so hard for everyone to adopt it.
A quick look at market share figures shows that Windows XP not only didn’t lose too many users when Windows 10 launched, but it even gained more, managing to improve its score for two consecutive months. As compared to May 2015, Windows XP only dropped approximately 4.5 percent, which is extremely low for an operating system that no longer receives updates.
What happened when Windows 10 launched?
One year ago, Windows XP was running on 14.60 percent of desktop computers in the world and gradually dropped until it reached 11.72 percent in July, the same month when Windows 10 officially got to see daylight.
In August, however, Windows XP recovered to 12.14 percent and then jumped to 12.21 percent the next month, before eventually starting to decline once again in September.
The drop continued until January 2016, when Windows XP once again managed to increase its share from 10.93 percent to 11.42 percent, thus going back to the same level as six months before.
In the last few months, Windows XP has continued to lose market share points, but it does it at the slowest and most painful pace possible. It dropped from 10.90 percent in March to 10.63 percent the next month before eventually going down to 10.09 percent in May.
Without a doubt, it’ll take many more months until Windows XP disappears completely, but these stats also show that Windows 10 still can’t make a difference no matter how hard Microsoft is trying.