14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is working at full speed to bring the brand new Windows 10 to the market as soon as possible, but in the meantime, the company might start thinking about what could easily become a problem in case the upcoming OS doesn't convince everyone to upgrade.
Windows 7's market share is growing at such a fast pace that it's very likely to become the new Windows XP when its support comes to an end in January 2020, with market share data provided by analysis firm StatCounter indicating that its usage continued to grow last month.
March 2015 figures show that Windows 7 was powering a total of 53.44 percent of the computers worldwide, which means that more than 1 in 2 PCs are running this particular OS version.
Fortunately, in addition to Windows 7, Windows 8.1 also improved its market share and is now sitting at 15.41 percent, enough to make it the world's second most popular desktop operating system, according to StatCounter data.
Windows XP lost more users last month, and that's a thing that everyone expected to happen, given the fact that its support ended in April 2014, so the 14-year-old operating system is now installed on only 11.14 percent of computers in the world.
Windows 8 goes down
One the other hand, Windows 8's market share is still going down, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, as this could happen not only because users switch to Windows 7 or a non-Windows OS but also thanks to the fact that more people install Windows 8.1 (which, by the way, is completely free of charge for all Windows 8 devices).
Right now, 3.97 percent of the PCs are running Windows 8, which pushes Microsoft's modern operating system very close to Windows Vista, which now holds a market share of 2.34 percent.
Linux has pretty much the same market share as before, with 1.81 percent of the desktop PCs now said to be powered by the open-source platform.
We're now awaiting OS market share figures from Net Applications, another third-party market analysis firm that also provides information on how many PCs worldwide are running a certain version of Windows.
Update: And they're out. Read more about Net Applications' desktop market share figures for March 2015.