If there is one thing Microsoft would like to see, it is some healthy adoption of the vanilla Windows 8 before it brings the highly-anticipated Windows 8.1 to the market.
Chances are that Microsoft’s Windows 8.1 strategy could very well be defined by what sort of a market share Windows 8 commands by the time it nears release. If the numbers are not as good as the company hopes for, it may be inclined to launch the 8.1 upgrade at a lower, more affordable price.
Ultimately, Microsoft aspires to see its latest platform take off and gain some momentum. Everything else will automatically fall in place once users are on board — particularly its fledgling apps ecosystem.
Windows 8 launched more than 5 months back, on a wintery October night.
Since then, the market share of Redmond’s new platform has increased, albeit at a rather slow pace. Despite Microsoft’s best efforts to promote and showcase some of the best new features of the platform, it is still behind what most in the industry circle would have liked to see by now.
Nevertheless, Windows 8 has overtaken both the iOS and Android platforms in the latest statistics, and currently finds itself the fifth most popular operating system in the world, just behind Windows Vista and Apple’s Mac OS X.
The newest numbers provided by StatCounter for the month of April show that Windows 8 has finally reached a market share of 4.64 percent.
Windows 7 tops the rankings with an impressive 54.28 percent — Windows XP and Mac OS X follow respectively with 21.48 and 7.01 percent of the market.
Ideally Microsoft will be hoping for at least a clean 10 percent of the market by the time it gets around to debut Windows 8.1. And then let the new platform do the talking, what with a bunch of new affordable devices along with the latest touchscreen notebook and ultrabook models.
But before we get to that, besting the market share of Windows Vista and Mac OS X is the next order of business.
