14 DAY TRIAL // China is one of the countries that are trying to get rid of Windows, at least on government computers, but statistics show that such a mission would be pretty much impossible, especially in the short term.
Chinese authorities hope that, by dumping Windows on their very own computers, local users would follow too and would move to a locally developed version of Linux specifically designed to be more secure and to not include any backdoors, as Windows does right now, according to their claims.
And yet, Windows was, is, and will most likely continue to be the undisputed leader in the desktop industry and China knows it very well.
A total of 97.1 percent of computers in China are powered by Windows, and these figures provided by StatCounter for the month of January reveal that Windows 7 and Windows XP remain the two top choices for those living in this country. This milestone was first reached on January 14, but stats now show that it actually increased by the end of the month.
No interest in Linux
Unsurprisingly, given Windows' surprisingly high market share, interest in other operating systems, such as Linux, is very low, so the remaining 2.9 percent of the OS industry is split between Mac OS X and other unnamed platforms, including here those open-source.
The biggest problem, however, is that most of these copies of Windows aren't legitimate, so it's easy to see why Windows is so popular and Linux has no fair advantage over Microsoft's own OS.
Most of the time, Linux is said to be a better choice than Windows not necessarily because it's more secure but thanks to its open-source license that allows users to run it without paying a single cent.
But with pirated Windows easily accessible, Linux loses this advantage, so most users go for a cracked version of Microsoft's operating system to keep the familiarity of the desktop and to be able to play and run the majority of apps.
Specifics on how many of these licenses are actually pirated are not yet available, and it would be really hard to get them, but Steve Ballmer, former Microsoft CEO, said a few years ago that nine out of ten Windows licenses in China were pirated. So it's no wonder Windows holds 97 percent of the desktop market in China.