Windows 8.1 surpasses Vista – but XP climbs too

Windows 8.1 has surpassed Vista in global market share, according to the latest stats, giving Microsoft’s latest OS a 10% slice of the market.

Net Applications’ latest round of usage statistics shows Windows 8.1 has climbed to 3.9% of the global market since its September arrival, topping Vista’s 3.3% for the first time.

Windows 8 peaked at 8% in September, and has now slid to 6.6% as users migrate to the free Windows 8.1 upgrade. Combined, the two versions of Microsoft’s new operating system account for 10.5% of the PC market, with gains coming at the expense of Vista and XP.

While Windows XP is down ten points over the past year, however, it bucked a six-month decline by climbing a quarter of a point from last month. The ageing OS is still in use on three out of ten PCs around the world, despite end-of-support looming in April.

Windows 7, meanwhile, climbed one point from last month and three over the year, and holds 47.5% of the total market.

Overall, Windows has lost a single percentage point in share over the year, with Linux PCs climbing from 1.2% to 1.6% and Apple’s OS X increasing from 7.1% to 7.7%.

Browser stats

The arrival of Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 7 helped give the browser a bump at the end of the year.

IE11 was languishing at 1.5% market share in October when it was only available on Windows 8/8.1, but has now climbed to 11.5%. That puts it ahead of IE10 and IE9, but still behind IE8’s 21.3%.