Windows XP formally retired on April 8 of last year. The adventure of Windows XP reached its end after almost thirteen years of service... or at least, that's what Microsoft thought. Despite the lack of support and security risks, a very significant percentage of users have refused to abandon XP. According to Netmarketshare, it's 18.93 percent, which makes it the number two in the market.
Is it hard to understand? Not at all. Maybe Microsoft can't find a coherent explanation, but we users have been through this before. When a product works, resistance to abandoning it is very strong. Believe it or not, I can still find terminals with Windows XP in many shops, printing receipts and managing inventory like on the first day. In the end, the Redmond giant hasn't given those users any solid reason to update their platforms, and that's how Windows XP endures. In fact, Microsoft silently admitted it mishandled the whole situation by enabling an out-of-band patch for Internet Explorer 6 after having retired XP.
The current state of the market
With Windows 10 approaching and a drastic shift in its business model, Microsoft still wonders what it can do to reduce Windows XP numbers. If we follow what the people at Netmarketshare recently published, the challenge is titanic. Statistics indicate that 18.93 percent of users keep Windows XP on their systems, effectively occupying the number two position in the market. The most used operating system is Windows 7, with a notable 55.92 percent. An important detail to keep in mind is that Windows 7's mainstream support concluded last January 13, and its extended support will remain active until January 14, 2020.
What about Windows 8.x? The combined numbers of its versions don't exceed 14 percent of the market, however, a greater number of users have been seen moving from Windows 8 to 8.1. From a general point of view, Windows' global dominance hasn't changed (more than 91 percent), but the persistence of Windows XP and Windows 7 represents a threat to Microsoft's future strategy. Windows 10 will be free for one year, which implies a desire to increase attention on its software store and subscription-based models. The problem is that neither Windows XP nor Windows 7 are compatible with that. The identity crisis became a generational gap, and there are no easy solutions.
