Microsoft Windows Shoves Past 11.85% this January

Microsoft Corporation's (NASDAQ:MSFT ^[1]) latest operating system seems to have borne fruit and the numbers keep escalating. According to the data published by the analytics firm, NetMarketShare, for the month of January, Windows 10 has experienced growth in the number of users as the software's global market share grew to 11.85%. This shows that Microsoft's Windows 10 is witnessing growth and has the potential to do better.

The Windows-maker grabbed a bigger slice of the operating systems market from the 9.96% Windows 10 users in December, for which it should be lauded. In fact, the company has seen a steady rise in the adoption rate of Windows 10, ever since its launch in late July last year.

This is because Microsoft gave the Windows 10 all it had as it wanted to unite mobile and desktop platforms under a single new operating system. The Mac devices have gained significant traction over the years, as they captured Microsoft's customers. The software giant knew that it had to act to keep its PC empire in place. Windows 10's predecessor, Windows 8, was not exactly a huge hit among consumers as many preferred the older version, Windows 7.

Furthermore, Microsoft has been encouraging users to adopt Windows 10 as it rolled out free upgrades for those using the previous versions; Windows 7 and Windows 8. So, if you're using Windows, you can upgrade to Windows 10 for free to check it out until July. If you don't like it, you can switch back to your previous operating system.

Surprisingly, NetMarketShare ^[2]'s statistics indicated that the ten-year old Windows XP's user-base is expanding. This is worrying because Microsoft has discontinued support for this version of the operating system, which puts user privacy at risk; and now at a growing rate. Windows XP runs on 11.42% of all desktops, as of January, up from 10.93% in December.

Meanwhile, Windows 7 continues to experience a falling market share to 52.47%; it is the most highly used and adopted operating system in the world. Windows 8 market share rose a negligible 0.1 percentage point to 8.1% in January. Windows 10 continues to show growth, despite lacking perfection and expected to receive patches and upgrades. Microsoft is going in the right direction with this operating system, but it really needs to pick up its pace.

However, according to the company's revenues reported for the December quarter along with recent announcements, it is evident that Windows is not the golden goose anymore. Microsoft wants to shift all focus on cloud computing and related services, like Azure, Office 365, and enterprise and consumer versions of Office. It was speculated that after Windows 10, the company is likely to take time to come up with something for the operating system business. Meanwhile, CEO Satya Nadella proceeds with his plans to shift the company from desktop and unsuccessful mobile business to the world of cloud. On the other hand, the most popular Apple OS so far is the Max OS X 10.11.