Historical reference for those that don't remember (myself included!):
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp- Presumably, this is aggregated either from w3's viewing stats, or from stats sent to them in some manner.
- Data goes back to 2003 and is split up by OS, not just vendor.
- Just guessing, ME is probably rolled into 98[SE] stats.
Markers:
- Win95 ended 2001
- Win98 ended 2006
- Win2k ended 2010
- Vista ended 2012
- XP ended 2014
- Win2k released 2000
- XP released 2001
- Vista released 2006
- Win7 released 2009
When Win98 ended, it was only 1-2% of online computers. So who cares. Period articles give a figure of 70 million machines still using it; probably, few of these were online, which is fine as far as security goes.
When Win2k ended, it was < 1%.
Vista ended with a few still (3-4%), but wasn't very popular anyway.
What's totally unprecedented is, XP is still at 10% or so, and that's just online machines (the average news story is giving it as 30%, which I guess is by machine, not just web views). And that after 13 years.
Vista, Win7 and Win8 have made a strong impact, with Win7 being dominant online and probably Win8 coming up in the next year or few.
What's ironic is, M$ finally did exactly what everyone wanted them to do: make a robust OS that endures. And now they're probably losing money on it (I would assume either losses, or dwindling support profits, are the motivation for cutting support). You can be absolutely sure they won't make that mistake again -- which is all the more reason to keep it with some confidence!
Interesting to think what could happen -- probably won't, but, suppose this: suppose Win7+ were just absolute shit and the XP market share was still 50% and going strong. And M$ drops support. Would the [good] hackers create patches for them? Is it even possible?! (Of course it's possible, some of the attacks even look like patches; there was a Windows Update exploit, remember!)
Tim