Stats show that both Windows 8.1 and Windows XP gained more users last month

Mar 3, 2014 10:27 GMT  ·  By

As I reported to you a couple of hours ago, weird things are still happening in the desktop OS charts, with Windows XP improving its market share despite Microsoft’s efforts to move users to a newer operating system.

What’s more surprising is that Windows 8.1, Microsoft’s latest OS on the market, posted a growth that’s similar to Windows XP’s, which means that Redmond’s newest and oldest platforms are going side by side in the charts.

Windows 8.1 has posted an increase of 0.36 percent from 3.94 percent to 4.30 percent in February 2014, while Windows XP recorded a 0.23 percent boost from 29.30 percent to 29.53 percent.

The figures are as surprising as they are worrying, as Microsoft will officially discontinue Windows XP on April 8, which means that no other patches and security updates will be delivered to computers still running the ancient operating system.

Of course, the software giant also needs more users to make the move to a newer platform, not only because of security reasons, but also due to the fact that Windows 8.1 is yet to gain traction, so moving Windows XP users to the new OS release would boost adoption of the modern operating system version launched in October 2013.