Windows XP still has a strong foothold in the OS landscape despite it being declared dead by its maker Microsoft, new analysis has revealed.
According to data released by NetMarketShare for March 2015, Windows 7 dominates the OS market with a 58.04 per cent market share, up from 55.99 per cent in February. Redmond’s age-old OS Windows XP stands second in the list with 16.94 per cent global market share, down from 19.15 per cent in February.
Meanwhile, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1’s combined market share rose to 14.07 per cent in March, up from 14.04 per cent in February. The split sees the latest 8.1 version up slightly at 10.55 per cent and Windows 8.0 at 3.52 per cent. Mac OS X 10.10 holds a 3.96 per cent share and Linux has a share of 1.50 per cent.
Although Microsoft pulled the plug on extended support for Windows XP last year, the OS market share just dropped seven per cent since September 2014. This indicates that users are not willing to make a move to Windows 8.1.
It is believed that the scenario will change drastically with the late summer launch of Microsoft’s latest OS iteration dubbed Windows 10 as the new OS will be a free upgrade for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 users for the first year. Users still running Windows XP or Vista won’t be able to upgrade their PCs directly to Windows 10. They will either need to upgrade to Windows 8.1 and then to Windows 10 or simply buy a new PC equipped with Windows 10.
