The company has issued a statement to put things straight in this saga

Dec 10, 2013 06:42 GMT  ·  By

As you probably heard in the last couple of days, Microsoft recently updated the Windows lifecycle fact sheet page to state that Windows 7 retail sales ended in October, revealing that computers running this particular OS version will continue to be sold until November 2014.

The company has since updated the page to state that end date for Windows 7 retail sales is yet to be determined, which made many believe that pulling the plug on sales of its top operating system at this point was only an unfortunate decision.

However, Microsoft has issued a statement for Neowin to state that, in fact, it was all just a mistake, as the lifecycle page was edited for no reason.

“We have yet to determine the end of sales date for PCs with Windows 7 preinstalled. The October 30, 2014 date that posted to the Windows Lifecycle page globally last week was done so in error,” Microsoft said in the statement.

The company mentioned that retail sales of Windows 7 indeed ended on October 30, 2013, but sales of PCs running the operating system will continue for the time being.

“We have since updated the website to note the correct information; however, some non-English language pages may take longer to revert to correctly reflect that the end of sales date is 'to be determined'. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused our customers. We’ll have more details to share about the Windows 7 lifecycle once they become available. Additionally, we are confirming that the Retail software end of sales date for Windows 7 did happen on October 30, 2013.”

Windows 7 is at this point the world’s number one operating system with a market share of more than 45 percent, while Windows XP is the runner-up with approximately 30 percent.