Microsoft Windows XP, the very loved Desktop Operating System was launched over 12 years back and in today’s fast changing tech-age, that equates to a millennia. However, it seems that people across the world and especially Indians are still clinging on to it.
Over 25 percent Indians still use Windows XP as their desktop operating system. Worldwide, the same percentage stands at around 16 percent. China has the biggest userbase of Windows XP users in the world with over 41 percent still using it. Interestingly, according to Statcounter data, Windows XP was China’s most popular OS till 3 months back!
On the other hand developed countries like US, UK and Germany have Windows XP users in single digits.
Here are percentage of XP users in some of the major countries across the world
Windows XP users in India
Windows XP is still the second most popular OS in India with 25.39 percent of Desktops still running. One has to remember that Microsoft has completely stopped offering any kind of support for this 12 year old OS. While the usage of XP has dropped over last one year, the usage is still quite significant.
As of May 2014, Windows 7 has the highest usage with over 56 percent users using it on their desktops. Although Windows 8 was launched nearly a year back, it still had only 7.94 percent users. Check out this Statcounter graph shows the Top 7 Desktop OSes in India over past 12 months.
What are the pitfalls of using Windows XP?
While it is true that you can keep using Windows XP even after the support period has ended, it puts you at lot of risk. Here are some of them. According to Microsoft, it’ll become five times more vulnerable to security risks and viruses, which means you could get hacked and have your personal information stolen.
Forget about individual users, many banks and financial institutions are still used XP and 95 percent of ATM machines in India run on it, which means they are having a huge risk of getting hacked!
Also, companies that make devices like digital cameras, Internet-ready TVs, and printers won’t provide drivers that work with Windows XP, so if you get new devices, they won’t work with your current PC. And over time, the security and performance of your PC will just continue to degrade so things will only get worse.
If you are one of the users who still use Windows XP, we think it is high time you switched to Windows 8 (in all probability, you should not even look at Windows 7! )
Hi,This is Anand, from India , I am using XP since 2003, on my old desktop system, that was gifted by my father when I was in graduation. win XP and this desktop system are close to my heart. I have buy a laptop recently with win 8.1.