Windows 8 adoption remains sluggish

Windows 7 continues to be the king of Microsoft operating systems, with the latest market share stats suggesting end user adoption of Windows 8 remains sluggish.

According to Net Applications' monthly update of operating system market share, the number of people using Windows 7 and the soon-to-be retired Windows XP remained largely unchanged between October and November.

For example, 46.64 per cent of desktop users were running Windows 7 last month, up from 46.24 per cent in October.

Meanwhile, over the same time frame, Windows XP use increased slightly from 31.22 per cent to 31.24 per cent.

October saw Microsoft release its Windows 8.1 update, and since then use of the OS has increased from 1.72 per cent to 2.64 per cent.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that many users are likely to have upgraded to Windows 8.1, the percentage of people using the previous version of Windows decreased between October and November, from 7.53 per cent to 6.6 per cent.

Taken together, this means the market share of both versions of Windows 8.x combined increased between October and November by just 0.05 per cent.

This finding is surprising, given how much Microsoft has been pushing Windows 8.1 since the update dropped in mid-October, although it is a situation it could turn around over the impending Christmas shopping period.