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Despite all the media attention, Windows 8 is still not growing at the rate Microsoft would have hoped. Windows XP on the other hand, has... Windows 8 Market Share Not Improving, XP Still Hanging On

Despite all the media attention, Windows 8 is still not growing at the rate Microsoft would have hoped. Windows XP on the other hand, has continued to enjoy the same amount of market share as it did in previous years.

As stated by Net Applications, an Internet analytics company, Windows 8 has seen little progress with their market share in April, literally amounting to half a percentage in usage shares. Compared actively to Microsoft’s last big dud in the field, aka Windows Vista, the figures place Windows 8 a few paces behind the slow reception received by Windows Vista in 2007.

Windows 8 Not Improving, XP Still Hanging On

However, Net Applications did a comparative study between Windows Vista and Windows 8. Unfortunately, the figures are rather more in favor of Windows Vista which shows that by the end of six months, Windows Vista held a usage share of almost 5.8% among Window’s operated PC’s while Windows 8 is seen to be almost 1.6 points behind when compared over the same duration of time since its initial release in the market.

Nonetheless, the figures of April mark a difference between Windows 8 and Vista as coming to several tenths larger in points as compared to the month before. So far, this is considered to be the biggest difference seen in Computerworld’s tracking done year-long.

On the other hand, Microsoft is having trouble pushing Windows XP towards retirement which still stubbornly holds around 41% in usage shares among Windows PC systems on a worldwide basis in the month of April. However, in March, the usage shares amounted to almost 42%, so the drop in users only amounts to 1 point so far as reported by Net Applications.

Overall, Windows XP remains solidly resistant to Microsoft’s retirement efforts although the support for the 12 year old OS will be approaching its proposed retirement by April 8, 2014. Moreover, despite the fact that Microsoft’s support for Windows XP will be pulled, it is still predicted that the rate at which Windows XP is declining will mean that there will still be a substantial amount of XP users remaining.

Based on the figures that indicate the average rate of loss on a monthly basis, it is safely predicted that when the awaited date arrives, Windows XP users will still be among the Windows PC users and will amount to a total of 30.5% in percentage points.

Similarly, Net Applications has also reported upon the figures of the launch of other versions of Windows which reveal that Windows 8 has shown no effect upon the sales of Windows XP and the latter has remained dominatingly firm in the market with its percentage score of 48.7% in percentage points. The figures clearly show that Windows XP can hold its own among other versions of Windows and the launch of  Windows 8 has not affected this old OS at all.

[image via reachingutopia]