With Microsoft dropping support for Windows XP in April, you would think people would start moving on to Windows 7 or Windows 8. Apparently they aren’t and instead, Windows XP’s market share is increasing. According to the latest report from Net Market Share, XP’s market share increased from 28.98% in December to 29.23% in January.
Net Market Share measures usage and not install base, so it is unlikely that the increase is from people making the jump from Windows 95 to Windows XP. Whatever the cause, Microsoft can’t be thrilled that over a quarter of all desktops run a decade-old OS while just over 10% run Windows 8 or 8.1.
While Microsoft is dropping support for XP on April 8th, it will continue to provide security updates until July 2015. Even so, XP users face a security risk as Microsoft has warned that “the effectiveness of antimalware solutions on out-of-support operating systems is limited.”
A chart showing Windows XP’s remarkable resilience follows below.
