14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft launched Windows 8 in October 2012, Windows 8.1 one year later, is now working to bring Windows 10 out, and yet, an operating system it released nearly 14 years ago continues to have a market share that surprises pretty much everyone out there.
Windows XP is now powering a total of 19.15 percent of the desktop PCs out there, according to new stats provided by Net Applications, which is enough to make it the second most popular desktop OS in the world.
What's even worse for Microsoft is that Windows XP actually increased its share in February from 18.93 percent, which means that some users out there actually went back to XP last month.
The biggest problem for the Redmond-based software giant is the small market share that its modern operating systems continue to hold, as neither Windows 8.1 nor Windows 8 managed to post significant increases last month.
Windows 8 close to Vista levels
Right now, Windows 7 has a market share of 55.99 percent, so there's no doubt that it will remain the leading desktop OS for many years from now. In fact, Microsoft is worried that Windows 7 could become the new Windows XP in 2020, when its support ends, so the company will have a really hard time convincing users to upgrade.
Windows 8.1 is third in these charts with a share of 10.49 percent, while Windows 8 comes next with 3.55 percent. This means that Microsoft's modern OS has a combined market share of 14.04, so it's still behind Windows XP.
Windows 8, on the other hand, has lost users at a really fast pace in the last few months, as most of them have switched to Windows 8.1 or other versions, so it's now very close to Windows Vista, which currently has a market share of 2.11 percent.
The good news is that Windows 10 is gaining ground despite the fact that it's still in Technical Preview stage and stats show that 0.08 percent of the PCs are running it.
Windows 10 is expected to debut in the fall of 2015 and its share is likely to skyrocket after the public launch.