Windows 8.1 user count increases at the expense of Windows XP

Over the past month, many Windows 8 users have joined and Windows XP’s share of the operating system market has fallen. About 16.8 percent of Internet users now have a system with Windows 8 or higher.

This is evident from the figures of Net Applications, which keeps statistics of a large number of websites, notes Cnet. In the operating system market, Windows 7 remains by far the largest, with a share of 53.05 percent. That share has largely remained the same in recent months. In the month of October, however, a shift can be seen in the number of users of Windows 8 and above. Windows 8 now has a share of 5.88 percent and Windows 8.1 a share of 10.92 percent. Together that makes 16.80 percent. That is an increase of 3.54 percentage points in one month.

The growth of Windows 8 and above seems to have been mainly at the expense of Windows XP. It saw its share fall to 17.18 percent in October, while it was 23.87 percent a month earlier. Windows 8 and higher is therefore slightly smaller in terms of market share than Windows XP. Furthermore, the ‘other’ category, which includes Linux distributions, gained a small share in share.

In recent months, Windows 8 and above barely registered any growth in the operating system market. Compared to August, there was even a drop in market share in September. The sudden shift indicates that many users have upgraded their system from Windows XP to Windows 8.1.