14 DAY TRIAL // It’s no secret that Microsoft invested millions of dollars to make Windows 8.1 more successful and convince to upgrade not only Windows 8 users, but also those on old versions of its operating system, but adoption is going really well as far as the last 12 months are concerned.
Data provided by market researcher StatCounter reveals that, in the latest year, Windows 8.1 has indeed increased its market share, but not enough to overtake some of the previous Windows versions, such as the infamous Vista.
Windows 7 leads the charts with a market share of 55.01 percent for a 12-month period between September 2013 and August 2014, while Windows XP comes next with 18.43 percent. Mac OS X is third with 8.2 percent.
But what’s more embarrassing for Microsoft is that despite all its efforts to bring Windows 8.1 in the spotlight, Windows Vista continues to have more users. If you forgot, Windows Vista is considered to be one of the biggest failures of Microsoft in terms of operating systems, which puts Windows 8.1 in a really bad light given the fact that it’s been on the market for nearly 12 months.
Windows Vista has a market share for the aforementioned timeframe of 4.19 percent, which isn’t at all something to brag about. But Windows 8.1 is doing even worse, with 3.87 percent of the desktop computers worldwide said to be powered by this OS version.
Windows 8, however, is doing a lot better and holds a share of 7.83 percent, which pushes Microsoft’s modern operating system to a combined share of 11.7, enough to become the third most-used platform worldwide.