Windows XP's Share Falls Below 50%

Microsoft's Windows XP has slipped under the 50% share mark for the first time since Web measurement company Net Applications began tracking operating system usage.

Other metrics firms marked an earlier fall for XP. The Irish company StatCounter , for instance, said that the OS slipped under 50% last January. But unlike that rival, Net Applications' methodology weights its data by country to more accurately reflect use in countries like China, which produces relatively little data for Western measurements but has a huge pool of PC users.

StatCounter pegged XP's usage share at 43.9% in July.

The fall of XP has been gradual but still striking. In the last year, Windows XP's usage share as measured by Net Applications has plummeted more than 12 percentage points. Just two years ago, and several months before the launch of Windows 7, XP accounted for nearly three-out-of-four operating systems whose systems went online.

Although Microsoft did not note that XP slid below 50% last month, one would assume it's happy.

The company has been putting the squeeze on Windows XP users of late, reminding them that the OS will be retired in less than three years and telling them, "It's time to move on." The implied message: Upgrade to Windows 7 as soon as possible.

Today, Microsoft kept up the dump-XP drumbeat.

In a post on the Internet Explorer (IE) team's blog , Roger Capriotti, the head of marketing for Microsoft's browser, said of the even-older IE6, "With end of life for IE6 and Windows XP rapidly approaching, we expect [IE6's] drop in share to continue. It's great to see that the move of businesses off Windows XP and IE6 is helping to drive a worldwide drop in IE6 share."

Capriotti's use of the phrase "rapidly approaching" to describe XP's and IE6's retirement may be premature: Microsoft will serve up security updates for the operating system and that browser through April 2014.

It's clear that XP's fall has corresponded to Windows 7's climb.

According to Net Applications, Windows 7 finished July with a 27.9% global usage share, an increase of seven-tenths of a percentage point over June. In the last year, Windows 7 has gained 13.4 points, more than making up for the 12-point decline of XP.

If XP continues the pace of the last three months, the OS will drop to 40% by the end of the first quarter in 2012, when Windows 7 is projected to reach 35%. The two should cross paths by the middle of next year.

Projections of future usage share show Windows 7 will supplant XP as Microsoft's most-used edition by mid-2012. (Data: Net Applications.)

Not that those projections are sacrosanct.

In June, one analyst said that it was possible corporations -- whose purchases of new Windows 7 computers has been the only thing keeping the PC industry from negative growth numbers -- would skip Windows 8 , just as they did Vista, and concentrate on Windows 7.

That take dovetails with Microsoft's own recommendation. After the company unveiled parts of Windows 8 at a pair of technology conferences six weeks ago, it urged enterprises now deploying Windows 7 to stick with their plans.

But no matter how the future plays out, Microsoft's three-year release cycle for Windows means that XP will probably be the last edition to power an overwhelming majority of the world's PCs. The release schedule would prevent a duplication of the five-year lag between Windows XP's release in 2001 and Vista's debut in late 2006, one of the factors usually cited to explain XP's large-scale and long-term dominance.

Net Applications calculates operating system usage share with data obtained from more than 160 million unique visitors who browse 40,000 Web sites that the company monitors for clients. More OS statistics can be found on the company's site.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer , on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His e-mail address is gkeizer@computerworld.com .

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