Posted in: Desktop software

Windows XP still has 74 percent market share, Microsoft extends its lifespan to 2020

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Windows 7 might be flying off the shelves at an amazing pace but it’s the good ol’ Windows XP that powers the huge chunk of the computers around the world, Microsoft admits. To be specific 74 percent, or about three in every four PCs worldwide are still running loyal to XP.

Most users are obviously reluctant to upgrade from the old but still pretty functional OS. Several years back most industry watchers used to point at the Vista shortcomings as the explanation, but now that Windows 7 fixed almost all of them it’s obvious that the problem is a good portion of users finds XP good enough and an update simply isn’t worth the extra dollar.

So Microsoft decided to do the decent thing and extend its lifespan to 2020 (nope there’s no typo here – XP has ten more years ahead of it). Than means computers with Windows 7 can be downgraded for free (if, for whatever reason you really, really want it) and Microsoft will support those up to 2020 instead of the previously mentioned 2014.

That way everyone will be able to stick with XP for as long as they want, until they are ready to switch to Windows 7 (or Windows 17 – whatever the current version is in 2020).

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