For the second month in a row, Windows XP shows stronger growth than Windows 8.x
It’s a new month and so once again NetMarketShare reports desktop share for all of the major operating systems. What’s interesting this month is all versions of Windows showed fairly minor changes. Whether dropping or gaining, the differences in share were minimal.
However, one inescapable truth is clear from the figures. While Windows 8.x might finally have shifted 200 million licenses, use of the OS has pretty much plateaued. In February, Windows 8’s share declined from 6.62 percent to 6.38 percent, a drop of -0.24. Windows 8.1 increased shared from 3.94 percent to 4.30 percent, rising by 0.36. Combined, Windows 8.1 grew by just 0.12 percent.
XP on the other hand packed on 0.23 percent, going from 29.30 percent in January to 29.53 percent in February. XP’s share also grew December-January. I described that growth then as a statical (sic) anomaly (minor variations are always going to happen when recording monthly market share) but with end of life looming it could be partly down to users taking old XP PCs online for the first time in a while to research upgrade options, or selling old systems off cheaply or passing them on to younger family members. Tech journalists writing practical columns about XP’s end of life will also have some slight impact (I used XP for the first time in years last month for this very reason).
Windows 7 dropped market share, but again its decline was minimal. It went from 47.46 percent in January to 47.31 percent in February, a decline of -0.15 percent…
Part of the rise in XP use could also reflect XP people going back online. The use of IE8 has become increasingly vulnerable to attack and unsupported from website to website, it must have made people make the switch to Chrome. Since Chrome will support XP for another year, it’s a logical and wise choice for XP users to make. It’s hard for me to believe that, as the article says, that family members would pass down XP computers to other family members (probably the kids or uninformed elderly) knowing how risky online use would be. Online use is the only source from which these percentages can be measured, isn’t it? Of course, if they had already installed and configured Chrome as the browser before passing the computer down, it makes a little more sense.