14 DAY TRIAL // Statistics provided by market researcher Net Applications show that Windows XP managed to increase its share last month to once again become the second most-used operating system in the world.
This new increase might come as a big surprise for many people out there, given the fact that support for Windows XP ended on April 8, 2014, but it’s not a secret that many users actually refuse to upgrade and prefer to stick to this particular OS version.
At this point, Windows XP has more users than newer operating systems such as Windows 8.1, which continues to be performing well below expectations, no matter how hard Microsoft tries to promote it.
Windows 8.1 only powering 9.5 percent of the PCs
Windows 7 continues to be the number one operating system in the world with a really impressive market share of 56.26 percent, while Windows XP comes next with 18.26 percent.
On the other hand, Windows 8.1 is well behind and barely has half the market share of XP. A total of 9.49 percent of PC users are running Windows 8.1 on their computers, while Windows 8 is even more behind with 4.02 percent.
This means that Windows XP has more users not only than Windows 8.1 and Windows 8, but also than the two modern operating systems combined, which isn’t quite the best news for Microsoft after spending so much money on promoting new platforms.
Windows still powering more than 91 percent of the PCs
Right now, Windows is powering a total of 91.45 percent of the desktop computers across the world, which again reveals an important increase in market share in 2014.
Windows started the year with 90.74 percent and reached a new high in September, when 91.98 percent of the PCs were running Microsoft’s platform.
The operating system, however, lost a few users in the last couple of months, but forecasts are more than optimistic, given the fact that we’re quickly approaching the launch of Windows 10, scheduled to take place in late summer or early fall 2015.
As far as the other platforms are concerned, Windows has no rival on the desktop right now. A total of 7.21 percent of the computers are powered by Mac OS X, while Linux continues to be really far behind with 1.34 percent.