Migration Expert Zone

In our December 15, 2011 post, we reported on a study indicating that Windows XP was still the OS of choice for the majority of Windows users.

While Windows 8 won’t be released in beta until February 2012, a developer’s preview version has been available since last fall. It now claims 0.05% market share, up from 0.03% in November according to Techworld.  With many observers projecting a Windows 8 release to market sometime in fall 2012, it looks like Windows 7 will have only just then captured half the desktop OS market.

To be specific, Windows 7 currently enjoys 36.99%, or just more than a third, of the desktop market, according to NetMarketShare.  Windows XP still had more half the market in September, but has now dropped to 46.52%. Who has the rest?  Vista is still on 8.44% of user machines, with Mac OS on 5.07%.  The remaining 2.98% is split amongst a variety of other operating systems.

Microsoft has been pressing customers to migrate to Windows 7 in earnest since its WorldWide Partner Conference in Los Angeles last July, just one month short of Windows XP’s tenth anniversary.  At the conference, Microsoft repeatedly reminded attendees that XP support would end in April 2014.  Reports indicate that the market is responding, with XP losing market share in record numbers over the past four months.

The question now is whether the recent exposure for Windows 8 will now slow the tide streaming away from XP to Windows 7. Given the measurable benefits of migration to Windows 7 and the uncertainty around a final release date for Windows 8, it seems like a no-brainer. But we’ll continue tracking the Windows migration trends going forward, and we’d love to hear from you. 

Is your organization still on XP?  Are you going to wait for 8?  Please share your thoughts in our comments section.