It’s certainly no secret that consumers have been slow to adopt both Windows 8 as well as Windows 8.1. Windows 7 continues to maintain its dominance, and even Windows XP is much more popular than anything released since Windows 7, despite the fact that its roughly 12 years of age.
While Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 combined to reach double digits in marketshare roughly a month ago, Windows 8.1’s , which was released this past October, currently stands at 3.60, according to Net Marketshare. Sure, that’s extremely low, especially considering that it was a completely free download for Windows 8 users.
Even worse though, despite the fact that Windows 8.1 is inching upwards in terms of overall adoption, it’s actually a tiny bit less popular than Windows Vista (3.61), despite the fact that Windows Vista was released roughly eight years ago, and was not well received as well. In fact, there have been whispers recently about Microsoft employees reportedly calling Windows 8 “the new Vista.” That’s not exactly a vote of confidence for the tiled, polarizing OS.
Between that, and HP’s push to make Windows 7 and other non Windows 8 computers more visible on their site, and it’s no surprise that Windows 8.1 lags behind Vista in adoption rates. Though we expect it to surpass Vista shortly, perhaps even this week, there’s not much of a difference between a share of 3.60 and 3.90.
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