Stats show that Windows 8 users are jumping ship

May 18, 2015 05:52 GMT  ·  By

Windows 8 was launched with much fanfare in October 2012, but it’s no secret that what Microsoft called its first modern operating system failed to impress, so only few users actually upgraded from Windows XP or Windows 7.

And after the debut of Windows 8.1 in October 2013, Windows 8’s market share fell dramatically to Vista levels, thus confirming that this was one of Microsoft’s biggest failures in the operating system industry.

Market share data provided by StatCounter shows that Windows 8 lost nearly half of its users in the last 12 months, while Windows 8.1 tripled its user base in the same timeframe.

Windows 8 had a share of 7.81 percent in April 2014 and started losing users gradually, so in November 2014, only 5.42 percent of desktops were still running it. Windows 8 continued its decline, so it’s now powering only 3.99 percent of PCs across the world, which means that, in the last 12 months, it lost 3.82 percent of its users.

Windows 10 coming

Windows 8’s collapse is expected to continue in the coming months, as Microsoft is getting ready to introduce Windows 10, the company’s latest operating system that comes with plenty of new features, some of them supposed to fix the annoyances in the first modern OS.

Windows 10 is projected to see the light of day in July or August, but users can already try it out right away by registering for the Windows Insider program.

What’s more, Windows 10 will be offered free of charge to those running Windows 7 or Windows 8 on their computers, so there’s no reason to continue using an old OS version if the new one, which comes with the exact same hardware requirements, is offered at absolutely no cost.

Microsoft itself wants to forget about Windows 8 as soon as possible, and this is one of the reasons the company tries to bring Windows 10 out as fast as possible, but only time will tell if the new OS is good enough to secure Redmond’s leading position in the desktop OS industry.