Windows XP market share drops to 27 per cent

But figures suggest users migrating to Windows 7, not 8 or 8.1

Windows XP's market share is finally showing signs of heading south as Microsoft gears up to pull support for the ageing operating system next week.

But the bad news for Microsoft is that users appear to be migrating to Windows 7 rather than 8 or 8.1, judging from the March statistics of Net Applications.

According to Net Applications, which looks at the range of operating systems being used to browse the web, XP's share of the desktop market fell by 1.84 percentage points to 27.69 per cent in March.

But despite Microsoft's best efforts to promote Windows 8, it is Window 7 that appears to have picked up most of the slack as the operating system's market share jumped 1.46 percentage points in March to 48.77 per cent.

In contrast, Windows 8 and 8.1 saw their combined share nudge up just 0.62 percentage points to 11.27. Of that, 8.1 is still less prevalent, with a share of 4.89 per cent, compared with the 6.41 per cent share garnered by the original version.

The figures may come as some relief to Microsoft, which has witnessed XP's share actually rise in recent months despite its increasingly strident warnings over the dangers of remaining on the 13-year-old OS after support is pulled on 8 April.