back to article Windows XP market share fell off a cliff in October

Windows XP's market share took a dive – a big one – during October, according to the two counters of OS market share we've been following for a year now. Netmarketshare had XP going from 23.97 per cent of PCs to 17.18 per cent during October. Statcounter had XP going from 14.4 per cent to 13.22 per cent, a less dramatic drop …

  1. Alain

    Graph? what graph?

    The first graph is nowhere to be seen (using Chrome)... thought it was an AdBlock glitch, tried without it: same. Tried with Firefox: same.

    1. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

      Re: Graph? what graph?

      I can see a graph, but what I can't see is a cliff.

    2. Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: Graph? what graph?

      Dodgy iFrame. Fixing with actual normal boring file in 3 ... 2 ...

      1. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge
        Facepalm

        Re: Graph? what graph?

        Now I can see a cliff!

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "...milestone that speaks eloquently about the Microsoft of the past, present and future"

    Who is "Vulture South special correspondent", and why does it sound like spin?

  3. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    "Net" marketshare

    So the number of XP machines being used to browse whatever sites are signed up to their ads is down compared to Win8.

    The number of XP machines being used for real work inside corporate firewalls and not browsing ad-packed websites is .....

    In other news Halfords announce that the worlds most popular car is a 10year old Fiesta with fake XR3i badges and dummy turbo exhausts.

    1. big_D Silver badge

      Re: "Net" marketshare

      On the other hand, we completed our migration from XP in 2011, we now have around 70% W7 and 30% W8. Most of our customers have also already migrated. Our industrial touch PCs manufacturing was also migrated from XP embedded to 7 embedded at the same time.

      I haven't used a PC with XP on it since 2007.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I haven't used a PC with XP on it since 2007.

        Try working in the public sector. I was at the Ministry of Justice last week training people on 10 year old software. All their laptops were running XP.

        NHS is even worse.

        Anonymous 'cos they've not paid the invoice yet (posted by snail mail as they don't take email invoices).

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

    3. JDX Gold badge

      Re: "Net" marketshare

      Most corporate worstations are allowed to browse the internet so I don't think the XP "dark matter" is anything like as significant as you suggest.

      You're also blindly assuming that all those "dark" PCs are running XP rather than Vista/7/8.x, in fact you're using the lack of data to argue this is the case which is hugely unscientific,

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "Net" marketshare

      If I dare to browse any of my company's internal websites using my still-on-XP home PC I get a "Danger Will Robinson!"-style alert for every page.

      So I use a user-agent-changer plugin to pretend I'm on W7.

      Lies, damned lies, and statistics, etc....

  4. Anomalous Cowshed

    I wonder

    I wonder whether the top people at Microsoft feel pride at the fact that one of their products was so good that millions of people and companies are hanging on to it years down the line, in spite of all the improvements offered by the new versions...

    Or perhaps they are saying to themselves: darn, that XP was too good, it's bad for our bottom line, we need to come up with something that's not so good, to make sure that people are willing to switch over to the next best thing at the drop of a hat...

    er...OK. I'll get my coat, sorry.

  5. Arachnoid
    FAIL

    XP OS despite its age

    Still has a greater market share than Windows 8 so trumpeting a victory is a hollow sound bite.

    1. roblightbody

      Re: XP OS despite its age

      Only because for some reason they've split 8 and 8.1 on the chart.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: XP OS despite its age

      It just wont die!

      My current job is travelling round various sites exterminating it.

      The most infuriating thing is that when I log on I get a little ballon inviting me to take a tour and see all the wonderful new features. Its kind of sad really .

  6. david 12 Silver badge

    FUD from MS is working on most people.

    Only have one 95 machine, one '98 machine and one 2K machine in production now. Expect that in 15 years will probably only have XP machine left.

    1. david 12 Silver badge

      Re: FUD from MS is working on most people.

      Only have one 95 machine, one '98 machine and one 2K machine in production now. Expect that in 15 years will probably only have XP machine left.

      8 years later now, and factory now has two Win2K servers and two Win98 machines. Win95 machine upgraded to Win2K svr, 2 DOS machines upgraded to Win98. Four XP machines still in use in test and production equipment.

  7. Nate Amsden

    I don't get out much

    but I was kind of surprised to see an official Delta airlines computer running XP (had the XP screensaver at least) a couple of weeks ago at the gate I was at. Or maybe it is a generic computer managed by the airport and just used by whatever airline is at the gate I am not sure.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: I don't get out much

      All the immigration desks at Heathrow T5 were running XP when I went through last month

    2. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Re: I don't get out much

      The Checkin, Transfer and Boarding desks are more than likely provided by the Airport. The Staff sign in with their airline ID and get access to the airline DCS (Departure control System) which is where all the passenger details are held. The Airline DCS is an app supplied by the airline to the Airport. For small airlines they may well not have a DCS of their own so they use a generic one supplied by the Airport that allows them to connect to the system that hold all their Passenger details.

      There are a few suppliers of these terminal systems. AFAIK, they all migrated to Windows 7 a couple of years ago but and here is the nub.... Airports don't want to upgrade their systems. The 'If it ain't broke don't fix it' mantra rules ok!

      On the plus side, these systems are heavily firewalled off from the internet and their local copies of IE won't get access to the WWW (that is true in all the airports i've worked on).

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The truth hurts

    So let's get this straight:

    Linux on the desktop = nowhere.

    Mac on the desktop = nowhere.

    Microsoft on the desktop = still everywhere, just choose your flavour.

    How galling for all the little fanbois. Even the reviled Windows 8 market share is orders of magnitude higher than Linux or Mac.

    1. Shane Sturrock

      Re: The truth hurts

      The desktop is slipping down the charts for how people access the internet. When most people use phones and tablets to access their e-mail, websites and so on, where does that leave poor microsoft? King of an ever shrinking sphere with limited influence.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Windows

      Re: The truth hurts

      So what? There's an advantage to using something that's not the most popular. It's your loss that you feel the need to use something just because everyone else is. Non-Windows users are evidently not like that.

      But anyway, the desktop is losing popularity. Only advanced users will stay on the desktop, and advanced users need something more than what Windows provides.

    3. Anonymous Bullard
      Facepalm

      Re: The truth hurts

      Of course Windows is going to be the most popular desktop OS; It's forcibly installed on almost every consumer PC/Laptop!

      You have to try hard to get a computer without Windows on, and for the same price or less.

    4. Ken Hagan Gold badge
      Coat

      Re: The truth hurts

      "Even the reviled Windows 8 market share is orders of magnitude higher than Linux or Mac."

      Actually we don't know that. The missing market share (XP's drop minus Win8.1's gain) appears to have ended up classified as "Other". That's probably Android or perhaps "people configuring their browsers not to say". (If the latter, the sudden surge in privacy-conscious users is much to be welcomed. Perhaps the stories around ShellShock and Poodle (or whatever the name is) have reached a wider audience.)

      But it could, theoretically, announce the arrival of Linux (or BSD) on the Desktop.

  9. phil dude
    Joke

    frozen in virtual aspic...

    I have an XP that is frozen in a VM so I can sync my ancient nokia N8...

    Perhaps it will be like fossils and VM images will be found 1000 years from now, and scientist will say...

    "Where are these blue screen hieroglyphs you talk about?"

    P.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sounds like a flaw in their data collection

    No way did the number shrink by 5% in one month, that would require taking a few million XP machines out of service each day!

    I suspect they noticed the widening discrepancy with other measurements, found they had a big problem in their methodology that overestimated XP's share, and corrected it. Fixing it caused a huge drop which of course they aren't commenting on, because it would lead to uncomfortable questions like "how do you know that was the only problem?"

    If I'm right, next month it'll resume the steady declines of well under 1% per month.

    1. Tannin

      Re: Sounds like a flaw in their data collection

      Thankyou Doug. 16 posts down and someone finally has the sense to spot the obvious.

      (Not having a go at you here, not at all, just wondering a bit grumpily why none of the previous 15 contributors bothered to think it through and post such good sense on-topic.)

      Of course, it's possible that this is just a one-time methodological glitch and the numbers will return to more typical ones next time, but my money says that it is just as you say it is - they finally found a .major problem and corrected it, carefully not telling anyone about the precious goofs.

      XP nevertheless remains very common out there in the real world and there seems to be no particular reason why it won't go on doing useful work for a very long while yet. In my workshop, the pace of XP replacement work has slowed significantly over the last month or two. It's pretty rare now to get a straight XP upgrade job come in. To be sure, we are still replacing XP installs on existing hardware and replacing XP machines with new ones, but mostly now as a byproduct of some other presenting issue (such as a hardware failure or general deterioration) rather than specifically because the customer isn't happy running XP any longer. In short, the ones who haven't already switched look as though they will be running XP until the machine breaks or they can't find space for it in the nursing home.

      1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

        Re: Sounds like a flaw in their data collection

        We've been complaining about these numbers since El Reg started using them. The articles are little more than clickbait.

    2. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: Sounds like a flaw in their data collection @DougS

      A simple explanation for this sudden drop in XP combined with a rise in 8.1 is we are seeing the effects of the "Back to school", "uni", etc. system sales. Which would only show in the market share data in the month(s) following these system being used for real, namely after students return to their studies.

      Given the nature of market share data, all it is telling us is that people are using non-XP systems more than previously; so we could concluded that students have simply stopped using mum and dad's ancient XP system since they now have a brand new laptop of their own, running 8.1.

      This would also cover the projection you are making concerning the on-going decline of XP.

      1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

        Re: Sounds like a flaw in their data collection @DougS

        A simple explanation for this sudden drop in XP…

        is that there isn't one because it is only visible on of the reported surveys.

  11. Psmo
    Holmes

    Seems logical to me

    XP ran out of support this year, so there'll be huge numbers of enterprise migrations. Enterprise migrations often get prepped over the summer when staff are away, with a go-live in the Autumn so there's time for ironing out of issues before the end of the year.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A large uptick for "Other" on the first graph

    XP holdouts finally getting round to installing a flavour of linux on their old PCs?

    1. phuzz Silver badge

      Re: A large uptick for "Other" on the first graph

      Or something in the data gathering process broke and counted a bunch of XP machines as 'Other'.

      1. auburnman
        Windows

        Re: A large uptick for "Other" on the first graph

        Or people still sticking/stuck with XP are taking steps to obfuscate their OS so as not to advertise a vulnerability to all and sundry. I could speculate that a 'hide my OS' browser extension has gone viral.

  13. Sean OConnor

    Win7 AppStore

    Now that Windows 7 is well over 50% (and growing) isn't it about time MS gave us indie developers a break and came out with an AppStore for Windows 7? You know, like MacOS got *years* ago.

  14. Steve 114
    FAIL

    XP dark matter

    All 'friends and relations' I maintain are using XP (except one Vista accident) and none has plans to upgrade a computer that does everything they want. My experiments with Win10 Tech Preview on an older machine won't even boot from DVD (error 'code 5') - still trying. Linux Mint is a bridge too far for their software collection, so they'll just be on risk with XP until the hardware dies.

    1. Jess

      Re: All 'friends and relations' I maintain are using

      OS X or linux mint, (apart from one Vista system that was unavoidable due to an obsession with genuine MS Office)

  15. Vociferous

    Windows 7 crushes the opposition.

    Drives them before it, and hears the lamentation of their women.

    And that wont change until Win10 is released.

  16. roblightbody
    Holmes

    Why Split Windows 8 - misleading

    Why has Windows 8 been split into two? If you combine 8 and 8.1 (why on earth wouldn't you when 8.1 is just a free windows update to Windows 8) the graph is quite different.

    1. Spoonsinger

      Re: Why Split Windows 8 - misleading

      Because they are different O/S versions and not just a simple service patch. You might as well say why not combine Vista/Windows 7 or Win2k & XP.

      1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

        Re: Why Split Windows 8 - misleading

        "Because they are different O/S versions and not just a simple service patch."

        Not according to Microsoft. Not only is 8.1 a free upgrade, but for support purposes it is treated as a service pack and so 8.0 actually goes out of support in 2016.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Why Split Windows 8 - misleading

          if its a service pack then do all Win 8.X go out of support in 2016 or just 8.0.

          and if Windows 8 and 8.1 are split why is apple os X .1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9 not split in to separate lines or pie segments depending which graph you look at.

          Apple stop support for their OS much quicker than Microsoft, I have a mid 2008 Mac on the last OS the hardware will support as it wont run 64 bit and its not supported any more (since late 3013) so wide open to "shell shocked" at least new MS software will generally run on ancient hardware if you are prepared to wait as the cogs turn slowly. :-(

          Microsoft publish a lifecycle for their products i cant find one for Apple you just stop getting updates one day.

          I'm Keeping my windows 7 and Snow Leopard. Unless windows 10 is better beyond compare (better security, does not require a Microsoft ID for anything except windows store and NOT for updates, and does not force everything in to the Cloud.)

    2. earl grey
      Trollface

      Re: Why Split Windows 8 - misleading

      Because windows 8 is shite and

      windows 8.1 is only slightly less smelly shite?

  17. Yugguy

    Windows 8 outsells NONE-SELLING Windows XP

    This is news?

    1. mythicalduck

      Re: Windows 8 outsells NONE-SELLING Windows XP

      Market Share != Sales

  18. Nana99

    Done being jerked around by Microsoft

    Windows 7 is the last version of Windows my organization will buy. Except for a few legacy applications which will be replaced before 7 is declared obsolete and Microsoft tries to ram a "new" version down out throats, we have few dependencies on Windows and those that do exist are diminishing at a rapid pace.

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