During the month of December 2013, Net Applications reports that both Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 combined finally surpasses the 10% operating system market share. Windows 8 ended 2013 with 6.89% and Windows 8.1 ended with 3.6%, for a total of 10.49% market share.
On the other hand — with 95 days left before official support ends (at the time of writing this article) — during the last month of 2013, Windows XP fell below 30%, leaving the beloved operating system with 28.98%; this is 2.34% difference from November 2013 data. Windows 7, which seems to be the logical upgrade from many Windows XP users, gained 0.88% market share in the same period. Although, the figures aren’t Microsoft wishes, data shows that Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 are slowly growing and Windows XP is finally declining rapidly.
What’s really surprising is the Windows 8 figure, the operating system grew 0.23% during December 2013, despite Windows 8.1 has been out since October 2013 and is a free update. Probably the reason is that the number is from new Windows PC that didn’t ship with upgraded operating system.
So those are the numbers as we enter a new year (2014). Now it will be interesting to see how market shares drop or rise after Microsoft releases the forthcoming Windows “Threshold” update, which is rumored to bring the Start menu and many more familiar features to Windows 8.2 later this year.
