Its been almost two years since the release of Windows 8, yet Windows 7 is still dominating the Windows platform by having a commanding market share of 52.71%.
While it would seem like the market share for Windows 8.1 would be rising, it has actually fallen according to Net Marketshare. For the month of August, Windows 8.1 took a .42% dip bringing its total market share down to 6.67%. Windows 8 didn"t fair much better with a .69% dip, down from 6.28% the previous month and as a whole, Windows 8 / 8.1 is currently running on only 12.26% of machines around the world.
Windows 7 on the other hand, has risen, up 1.5% and has a dominating 52.71% market share. Perhaps what is most alarming is the amount of Windows XP users. Windows XP was officially made EOL in April, yet it still has a market share of 23.87%.
Although these statistics are alarming, Microsoft has announced its latest OS, Windows 10. This release will probably be the most important for Microsoft, designed with familiarity in mind, and will hopefully attract those on Windows 7 and XP to the latest platform.
Although a release date has not been announced, a downloadable preview is currently available. While Windows 8 / 8.1 had some unique features, it is clear that these the OS will go down as a failure in terms of the market share that it was able to grab.
Source: NetMarketShare via WinBeta