Microsoft is due to cut off official support for Windows XP on April 8, 2014, or just over eight months from today. However, the latest worldwide desktop operating system market share numbers from Net Applications still show a lot of PCs are using the 12-year-old Windows XP.
The numbers released for July show that Windows XP still holds 37.19 percent of the OS market share. That's actually slightly higher than the firm's numbers for June, which showed Windows XP with 37.17 percent. Microsoft reps recently said that their goal is to get Windows XP down to less than 10 percent by the support cut off date but these new statistics show that Microsoft will have to work very hard to reach that goal.
Microsoft has actively been informing Windows XP users about the support cut off date for over two years now. However, it would appear their efforts have not been enough to convince a large percentage of those owners to upgrade to Windows 7 or 8. August 2011, Net Applications showed that Windows XP had 52.46 percent of the OS market share. That's a drop of just 15.27 percent in two years.
If Microsoft is to reach its goal of getting Windows XP down to below 10 percent, it will definitely need to step up its efforts. That might include sending Microsoft IT workers directly to major businesses that still use Windows XP to help them with the upgrade process or bringing in third party IT companies to do the same.
Of course, Microsoft could extend the Windows XP support cut off deadline once again, but so far the company has shown no interest in doing that. However, we have recently seen Microsoft change its mind on more than one occasion and it's possible that the company could do so again in this case.
In related news, Windows 7 is firmly in the number one spot, with 44.49 percent of the OS market share, up from 44.37 percent in June. Windows 8, which reached the RTM stage a year ago today, is third with 5.40 percent, up from 5.10 percent in June. Windows Vista is fourth with 4.24 percent, but is still higher than any other Mac or Linux OS on the chart.
Windows 8.1, which launched as a preview version in June, is only taking up 0.02 percent of the OS market share in July, according to Net Applications.
Source: Net Applications | Image via Net Applications
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