For the second month in a row, the percentage of the world’s PCs running Windows 8 or 8.1 has declined slightly. According to Net Applications, 12.5 percent of desktops and laptops worldwide were running Windows 8 or 8.1 in July, a drop of .06 percent from June.
ComputerWorld‘s Greg Keizer reports that Windows 8 adoption has now fallen behind the pace set by Windows Vista. “That Windows 8’s uptake performance has not matched Vista’s is important because the latter, widely panned at the time, has earned a reputation as one of Microsoft’s biggest OS failures,” he writes. “By association, then, Windows 8 looks to be the same.”
By contrast, Windows 7 continues to grow its market share, boosted largely by enterprise adoption. And Windows XP, which Microsoft no longer supports, was still running on nearly a quarter of worldwide PCs in July.