14 DAY TRIAL // They say Windows XP is ancient, extremely vulnerable to hack attacks, and very slow as compared to modern operating systems such as Windows 7 or Windows 8.1.
But that doesn't seem to matter at all for those who still have Windows XP on their computers, and statistics provided by StatCounter for the last 10 months show that the operating system that Microsoft introduced nearly 14 years ago is not going to die anytime soon.
While Net Applications puts Windows XP on the second position in the desktop OS market share rankings, StatCounter claims that it's third, after Windows 8.1, but both market analysis firms confirm that millions of computers are still running this old OS version right now.
Windows 8.1 needed one year to overtake Windows XP
Windows XP support came to an end in April 2014, so since then, Microsoft no longer provides updates and security patches, which means that computers running it are vulnerable to exploits trying to take advantage of flaws found in the operating system.
But users still run Windows XP on their computers, and what's worse, they don't seem to be willing to dump it in the coming months.
In April 2014, when Microsoft pulled the plug on Windows XP, the OS was powering 17.16 percent of the PCs worldwide, according to StatCounter, and just as anticipated, it adopted a declining trend ever since.
But contrary to what some people (and Microsoft) expected, Windows XP's decline wasn't as dramatic as hoped, so in October 2014, 13.22 percent of the world's computers were still running it. What's worse, Windows 8.1, launched in October 2013, needed one year to overtake Windows XP, as the swap took place in November 2014.
Today, Windows XP is still one of the top choices for PCs worldwide and that's very unlikely to change anytime soon, despite the growing interest in Windows 10.
Windows XP currently has a market share of 12.23 percent, below Windows 8.1 - 14.78 percent - and Windows 7 - 54.13 percent - and is likely to continue the painfully slow decline in the next months.
Windows 10 might not change anything about Windows XP's share because the new OS is not offered as a free upgrade to those who are still on the 14-year-old platform. What's more, computers running XP require hardware upgrades to cope with Windows 10's system requirements, so there's no doubt that Windows XP will still be around for a little bit longer.
