Sorry Windows 8, XP Is Still in the Game

In news that Microsoft would probably rather not hear, its aging operating system - Windows XP - gained market share in January at the expense of Redmond's newest OS.

The month ended with XP at 29.23 percent global market share, up from 28.98 percent in December, according to stats from Net Applications. It landed at No. 2 behind Windows 7, which had 47.49 percent of desktop operating system share in January. But that too was down ever so slightly from December's 47.52.

News of XP's stay power comes as Microsoft prepares to stop supporting it as of April 8. But given that so many PCs still run the older OS, Microsoft last month announced that it will continue updates to its antimalware signatures and engine for Windows XP users through July 14, 2015.

Still, Redmond would much prefer you dump XP for Windows 8, which is currently the No. 3 operating system with 6.63 percent share. The first update to that OS, Windows 8.1, was at 3.95 percent for January, meaning about 10.58 percent of PC users are running some version of Windows 8 almost 1.5 years after its Oct. 2012 debut. That is, however, up slightly from the 10.5 percent it had in December.

The much-maligned Vista is holding on at 3.3 percent, down from 3.61 percent in December, while Mac OS X 10.9 was at 3.2 percent in January.

:story: PC Magazine