14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is said to be working on some pretty big changes for Windows users, including a completely new operating system called Windows 9, but also updates for Windows 8.1, so all eyes are on what's to come for the world's number one desktop platform in the coming months.
At the same time, millions of users are still keeping an eye on Windows XP, the OS version retired on April 8 but which is still powering quite a lot of desktop PCs across the world.
And still, there's one OS version that's not making the headlines anymore these days. Windows Vista, the platform that has often been described as Microsoft's biggest failure ever, is still alive and kicking and today we're going to find out how it's doing.
Statistics provided to us by market researcher Net Applications indicate that Windows Vista has gradually lost users in the last months, but eventually reached a market share of 2.90 percent in May 2014.
One year ago today, Windows Vista was installed on 4.24 percent of desktop computers worldwide and as a result of Microsoft's efforts to move users to newer operating systems, some of them jumped ship. Windows Vista dropped to 4.11 percent in August 2013 and then to 3.98 percent in September the same year.
Since then, Vista continuously lost users, dropping to 2.99 percent in March this year, one month before the end of support for Windows XP. Surprisingly, it recovered 0.01 percent last month, but this is obviously a market share increase which can really be ignored by pretty much everyone.
Windows Vista is often referred to as a true disaster for Microsoft and former CEO Steve Ballmer himself admitted that this particular OS version really disappointed everyone. Ballmer said that Vista was his “only mistake” while at the helm of the company, admitting that Microsoft invested millions of dollars in a product that really failed to sell in high numbers.
“When I look at it and I say, okay, what's the thing that I did that I feel -- that I regret the most, not just in my CEOship but my whole time here, it's absolutely 'Longhorn becomes Vista.' That was the single biggest mistake I made,” Ballmer said last December.
“Why? Not only because the product wasn't a great product, but remember it took us five or six years to ship it. Then we had to sort of fix it. That was what I might call Windows 7.”