Windows 8, 8.1 about to overtake plunging XP

Windows 8, 8.1 about to overtake plunging XP, on Netmarketshare's latest numbers

Use of Windows XP fell dramatically last month, while use of Windows 8.1 grew dramatically, according to Net Applications' numbers published at Netmarketshare.com. Is this a fact, an erroneous blip, or a historical correction? You decide…

Windows XP's market share has tumbled to just 17.2 percent — a fall of 6.7 percentage points — according to Netmarketshare's latest figures, published on Saturday by Net Applications.

At the same time, the combined market share of Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 has climbed to 16.8 percent, which is only 0.4 percentage points behind the venerable XP.

Perhaps next month's results will show that XP hasn't really fallen so far so fast, and the October numbers are a statistical blip. It's certainly very unusual to see an operating system's market share fall by 6.7 percentage points. In fact, previously, it took XP almost a year to fall by this amount.

However, it's also possible that last month's figures — which showed XP unexpectedly holding its own (down from 23.89 percent to 23.87 percent) — were wrong. Perhaps XP actually dropped a couple of percentage points last month, and another couple of points this month. This would make sense in the context of users migrating away from XP, now that it's no longer supported.
 
Hi there

These sorts of stats aren't really very meaningful -- People buying say the Surface Pro 3 won't be running XP on these (although you CAN as a VM). Old company computers have reached "Book value" so will be replaced too - I think companies were delaying upgrading until they could see what the future holds. W10 so far looks promising enough and there also might have been some sort of a rush to purchase Corporate W7 computers before Ms stopped supplying the OS.

I mean you could say - how many people are still using Windows 98 (not as a VM) -- and does it matter.

The real interest to Ms is how many LICENCES / SERVICE CONTRACTS do they have - more or less than previous years - whatever OS is on the computers.

To those who like conspiracy theories -- maybe Ms should covertly ENCOURAGE people to stay on XP for a while and then of course charge them an absolute FORTUNE to untangle everything when the security breaks down !!!! I don't think the current CEO's of Ms have a large enough I.Q to work out that scenario though. !!!!

Cheers
jimbo
 

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A lot of those old XP era PC's have reached end of life. The replacement new PC's come preinstalled with 8 or 8.1. That doesn't necessarily mean those users prefer 8 over XP. They didn't have a whole lot of choice. You'd likely have to go out of your way to get a Windows 7 PC these days. Joe average will just buy what's out there.
 

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That will never happen. It doesn't matter if the machine came with Windows 7 or 8 OEM. As long as it has drivers for XP, I will always be on XP on that machine...

See, if I disable flash on IE and have MSE installed, it's as secured as if malware did not exist... All flash is good for is YouTube, which I can always access with a Linux live USB...
 

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