
Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 pass 10% market share, Windows XP falls below 30% - hackhackhack
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/01/01/windows-8-windows-8-1-pass-10-market-share-windows-7-still-gains-windows-xp-falls-30/
======
bhauer
I've been using my new Dell Venue Pro 8 (Windows 8.1) on the holiday break and
although I've found technology boring for the past two years, I found myself
quite enjoying this new little tablet.

Now, if only Windows 8.2 or 9 focused some needed attention on large form-
factor ("desktop"), I'd be very happy.

~~~
blahbl4hblahtoo
I can't help but think that if there was a Venue Pro 8 with a decent dock so
that you could use it as a desktop and take it to a meeting as a tablet would
be just a no-brainer for corporate IT shops. I can't count the number of times
I have seem someone running between meeting rooms balancing their laptop like
a waitress running through a restaurant with a huge tray above her head. So,
maybe a thunderbolt port for docking?

~~~
emp_
Being from the enterprise world I concur.

The short-term advancement I am looking forward is having my ipad mini and
macbook air be a single core that can be docked a la Atrix and also become a
full blown desktop on a dock a la surface 2 with gaming capabilities. Having
it on a phone-size would be the next step but the 7 inch screen is so much
better for reading.

------
ecesena
I like the Windows 8 UX pretty much. I feel very comfortable with the
horizontal scroll which is, imho, totally natural and in some sense more
effective than the vertical scroll we got used because of smartphones.

Perhaps we're crazy, but at Theneeds we believed in Windows 8 and we released
our app [1] even before iOS and Android... let's see what happens ;)

[1] [http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-
us/app/theneeds/9e1d48a...](http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-
us/app/theneeds/9e1d48a5-8c46-4723-ba46-9fc9cd6a8464)

~~~
apapli
Hey, that looks great. When I'm near my windows 8 computer I'll be sure to
give it a spin!

~~~
ecesena
Thanks. Let me have your feedback!

------
p4bl0
It's amazing to me that it is news that an OS which was released 13 years ago
is now passing under 30% of market share.

~~~
dageshi
If mostly all you do is fire up a browser to use the web then there's pretty
much no reason to upgrade from XP, I'd expect there's a lot of machines out
there which essentially fall into that use case, why spend money on something
for no appreciable gain?

~~~
userbinator
And post-XP a lot of things which used to be there and provided a "good
experience" to some users are gone, so some things are more of a loss than a
gain:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Win...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Windows_Vista)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Win...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Windows_7)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Win...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Windows_8)

And you might be surprised how many are still using 2K or 98SE, whole
communities have developed around providing further patches and improvements.
OSs that are "dead" in the mainstream continue on as things approach more of
the "retro" community...

(I'm still using XP, haven't needed more than that. Will likely still use it
even after MS stops support. I also regularly used 98SE up until around '08,
then I dual-booted with XP until '10.)

------
Camillo
Were 30% of people really buying Windows XP machines last year? I think they
meant "usage share" rather than "market share".

~~~
harshreality
Thanks for that. I've just acquired a new pet peeve: not only is "market
share" not "usage share", but usage share is not the same as web usage which
is all web analytics can measure.

------
yogo
The movie _Hard to Kill_ should be remade about Windows XP and IE6 :)

~~~
taspeotis
IE6 is pretty much dead. It's IE8 that won't die.

~~~
yuhong
Do anyone know the percentages of the split between XP/Vista/7 in the IE8
population?

~~~
taspeotis
Here's what I have from about 6 months of Google Analytics. This is a line-of-
business web application. GA is only on the login page.

Visits 5,645

% of Total: 4.25% (132,872)

XP: 62.37%

7: 35.57%

Vista: 1.52%

Server 2003: 0.53%

That Windows 7 number scares me a bit.

------
rdtsc
Does "Linux" include Android and ChromeOS? One of my relatives got a
Chrombook. two others got Android tablets. Other family got two new Android
Moto G smartphones. Out of say 30 people I don't know anyone who got a new
windows phone, tablet or desktop.

~~~
w-ll
I got a surface pro 2 and am very surprised at how much I enjoy it. Playing
games like Myst off of Steam blew me away. And this might sound crazy... but
IE 11 is my default browser. Chrome is almost unusable on it but IE works
great. Again, Very Surprised at how awesome it is.

It's a tablet size computer, NOT a tablet sized phone.

~~~
Offler
I think Firefox has been Metro optimized.

~~~
w-ll
I haven't tried a Metro version but the latest FF in desktop mode doesn't have
support for basic touch screen gestures, and doesn't support the stylus. Same
with Chrome, but Chrome will outright freeze on pages that so far looks like
some weird scroll configs (gmail after opening a few messages freezes)

IE 11 has at least basic gesture support, pinch-zoom, gravity scrolling
(whatever its called). But what I really love is using the stylus, and IE
treats that as mouse input, so you get hover, click, etc..

------
digitailor
Does anyone know what the correlation is between the rapidly decreasing WinXP
market share and the size of the large botnet pools?

------
tristanperry
I think a bigger story from these statistics is the rise in Linux: "while
Linux gained 0.17 percentage points (to 1.73 percent)"

Going from 1.56% to 1.73% is an ~11% increase, which is a pretty large rise
(albeit from a smaller base)

Meanwhile, XP's "huge" drop was 7%. Which is a fair drop, but I wouldn't call
it huge.

Seeing this rise in Linux is promising.

~~~
Theodores
There is no rise in Linux adoption unless you count ChromeOS.

I use Linux on the desktop but it has been a while since I have seen or heard
of anyone making the move to Ubuntu or anything else install-yourself on the
desktop. However I do know of lots of happy Chromebook users.

There is no headline story here as far as Linux is concerned. As I see it
there is a very slow replacement rate for regular PC's - 10% market share in
over a year looks to me like only 11% of PC's have been replaced in the last
year. Given PC's are supposed to have an average lifespan of 5-7 years that
means Windows really is not selling very well.

~~~
Beliavsky
PC's with 2-3 terabyte hard drives and 8+ GB of RAM are not that expensive,
and download speeds are fast with broadband, which allows "excess" resources
to be used to obtain and install a Linux iso within Windows using VirtualBox.
So it's become a lot easier to experiment with Linux. I like Linux Mint.

~~~
Theodores
[http://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F027q8xw](http://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F027q8xw)

------
iamthepieman
If you're a developer and use Windows for any reason then Windows 8.1 is a
huge improvement over previous Microsoft operating systems. Only Windows 2000
compares. The built in type-1 hypervisor alone is worth the upgrade. Hyper-V
is faster than virtual-box and other is becoming a real competitor to VMWare
and Citrix products.

~~~
adventureloop
Maybe, but 8.1 killed all of our VS2005 projects. If you are a developer that
doesn't want to do upgrades on potentially fragile build files it is not a god
send.

------
thedawn
Very interesting. I think that Win8 is much much better to use especially when
you have a touch screen.

------
guillemsola
But this netstat thing is only taking into account those computers with
Internet usage. Would the amount of corporate, administration, financial...
computers limited to intranet usage be long enough to modify this graphic?

~~~
bluedino
I wouldn't be surprised if XP's share increased. Most of the desktops at a
large healthcare company we had as a client were still running IE6.

~~~
ericcumbee
If that is the case, Windows XP share will drop rapidly over the next few
months. When MS ends support for XP it will no longer be in compliance with
HIPPA.

~~~
guillemsola
Not all have to fulfill the hippa. For instance I know one of the greatest
stores chain in my country that is still using win2k. Good OS by the way XD...

~~~
ericcumbee
No,but the parent mentioned healthcare.

------
quattrofan
I wonder where Chrome sits in this.

------
lucb1e
Slow news day?

