Windows 8.x marketshare climbs to 18.65 percent

The Inq reports Windows 7 and 8.x saw increases in marketshare last month. The retired Windows XP operating system saw its marketshare decline by 3.61 percent to 13.57 percent, while Windows 7 gained 0.66 percent to 53.71 percent.

Adoption of Windows 8.x is picking up slow but steady. The marketshare of Windows 8.1 saw a 1.18 percent gain to 12.1 percent while Windows 8 saw its share increase by 0.67 percent to 6.55 percent. The combined marketshare of Windows 8.x is now 18.65 percent.

The Inq also has some extra information about why NetMarketShare's previous stats showed such a a big drop in Windows XP marketshare. It seems they kicked out some major Chinese websites that had a near 100% Windows XP userbase:

The latest figures from Net Applications' Netmarketshare are the first since confusion over a sudden drop in stats was explained by a decision to remove a number of Chinese website hits from the statistics which had "audiences heavily skewed towards Windows XP".

Calculation of the figures is based on the number of visitors to websites registered by the company, but it was considered that Chinese sites, owing to their content and the Great Firewall, were irrelevant to a global audience.

The result was a sudden drop in marketshare for XP that was, in fact, caused by missed calculation, rather than miscalculation. While the figures stand, they will be a little jarring until we all get used to the new trends.