For the last few months, data collected from Net Applications showed that the use of Windows XP in PCs worldwide had remained nearly flat, with the numbers from November indicating its market share was set at 31.22 percent. Today, the firm updated its OS data for the month of December 2013 and the numbers showed that Windows XP use finally started to fall once again.
The firm's statistics indicate that Windows XP's market share went down to 27.84 percent last month, a huge drop of 3.38 percent compared to November. That has to be good news for Microsoft as it tries to get more Windows XP users to upgrade to Windows 7, 8 or 8.1 before it cuts off support for the over 12 year old operating system on April 8th.
Windows 8.1, which launched as a free update for Windows 8 users in October, is now used more than Windows Vista which launched in January 2007, according to Net Applications. The PC market share for Windows 8.1 went up to 3.50 percent in December, compared to 3.46 percent for Windows Vista. Windows 8 is still ahead of its newer version at 6.65 percent. Combined, the market share of Windows 8 and 8.1 is now at 10.15 percent, up from 9.3 percent in November.
Windows 7 is still the most used PC operating system in the world. Net Applications shows it commanded 49.26 percent of the market in December. That's well ahead of November's market share number of 46.64 percent.
Source: Net Applications | Image via Net Applications
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