Windows XP Falls Below 25% Market Share, Windows 8 Drops Slightly

An anonymous reader writes: Despite support for Windows XP finally ending three months ago, the ancient OS has only now fallen below the 25 percent market share mark. To add to the bad news for Microsoft, after only nine full months of availability, its latest operating system version, Windows 8.1, has lost share for the first time. For desktop browser share, Chrome is up, taking mostly from Internet Explorer and Firefox. For mobile browsers, Safari continues to fall while Chrome maintains strong growth.

False count

[frovingslosh]

It looks like this count is coming from someone monitoring what OSs they see in use. That being the case, it must be greatly under-counting Windows 8 and Win 8.1, since while they may be on many more computers, they are unusable.

People hear "Windows 8" and run away

[rebelwarlock]

8.1 might be a huge step up, but it doesn't matter. People remember the UI disaster that was Windows 8, and figure 8.1 can't be that much different. It has such a bad reputation, they'll need to call it something else to sell it at this point. Would you even consider having a doctor give you Cancer.1, or would you hear the question and immediately get yourself a new doctor without even finding out what Cancer.1 was?

Re: Who has the market share?

[loufoque]

I feel good knowing I'm part of the 1%.

Re:Who has the market share?

[dbIII]

I would be curious to see how Azure is impacting Windows Server market share

We'll find out next leap year when they all go down again :)

It's a joke - I don't really expect a third major leapyear fuckup from Microsoft, twice should have been enough of a wakeup call.