Windows 7 tops 20% market share

Mac OS as well slid, from 5.16% in January 2010 to 5.02% last month, however Apple's iOS - found on iPads and iPhones - gained from 0.59% to 1.69%, led by strong growth by the iPad.

Strong year

Rival Android as well had a strong year, growing from a 0.06% share in the beginning of the year to finish with 0.4% of all browsing devices.

I'm amazed that so many computers are for all that running Windows XP. I'm guessing many of these are businesses that cannot easily justify upgrading due to potential difficulties with migrating software to newer systems.

Panacea for all ills

Isn't a panacea for all ills. I have a Siemens ISDN PABX at home and they haven't updated the software since 2001, although the product is for all that on sale! The software doesn't even officially support XP, however the drivers refuse to install in XP mode. In a word I keep an old laptop around, just for programming the device. The other problem is corporate intranets that are designed to work on IE6 and won't work with other browsers or newer versions of IE. That leaves companies with little option, at present, other than investing millions in updating their internal infrastructure. A redisign, using modern tools and lessons learnt over the last few years would lead to much better productivity, yet it is an initial cost, that many companies aren't prepared to invest, especially in the current economic climate. That said, we only have one XP laptop left here - and in other words for programming scanners, which use Windows Embedded, which won't work with Vista or 7... The rest of our users are either on Windows Terminal Server 2008 R2, Windows 7 or SUSE Enterprise Linux.

"I'm amazed that so many computers are for all that running Windows XP." Why? Seven will not run 16bit installer programmes. Full Stop and End of Story if you want or need to use those.

@skarlock: "I'm amazed that so many computers are all in all running Windows XP." At the end of 2009, our small business completed a 10 PC upgrade with all computers downgraded from Vista to XP Pro. All run fine and suit our needs. We have no need to upgrade hardware or OS until 2012-2013. I'm sure other small businesses are in the same boat.

There is no substance in these % statistics unless it is accompanied by actual figures, so they are meaningless. Why change an operating system that already meets the needs of a business or individual to appease MS..... definitely Win7 will be superceded given rumblings of Win8 on the horizon! MS will have to wait awhile for me and my associates:-) Regards, XP!