Users show little signs of dumping Windows XP

• 
  Simon Quicke

  Microscope Editor
• Published: 04 Jun 2014 15:12

Despite all of the publicity around the end of support for Windows XP the movement by users away from the platform appears to be sluggish with those expecting a stampede towards a more up-to-date operating system left disappointed.

There is no denying that in the first quarter of this year there was an 'XP effect' that helped PC manufacturers but the transition away from the OS, which saw its support cut on 8 April, has still got some way to go.

The latest figures from Statista show that there has been little change with the worldwide market share of XP from March to May, with the OS still in second position after Windows 7 as the most popular platform.

Between March and May the share of XP only fell by 2.4%, with most of those customers appearing to head towards Windows 7 or 8.1, which both saw similar rates of growth in the past couple of months.

The continuing preference for XP carries on against a backdrop of increasing security warnings that using an unpatched and unsupported OS could leave users open to more cyber attacks.

“The users who remain on Windows XP are clearly putting their data at risk by doing so, despite the very clear warnings from both Microsoft and the information security industry. This data shouldn’t surprise anyone because the users who were still on XP by the time the End of Support deadline passed were already those who either can’t or can’t be bothered to upgrade. The XP holdouts have already demonstrated their ability to stick with the aging platform, so we can likely expect this population to dwindle only through hardware failure, lack of software compatibility and compromise," said Tim Erlin, director of security and risk at Tripwire.