Speaking at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference, the company’s corporate vice president Tammi Reller has said that 74% of business computers are still running Windows XP.
She also revealed that the average age of a PC is the highest the company has seen for a decade, at 4.4 years old. How that statistic was gathered and whether it applied to all PCs or just business-specific machines was, sadly, not revealed.
Though Reller’s speech focused on business rather than gaming, the trend for retaining XP can also be seen through sources like Steam’s hardware statistics. These show that the most popular operating system in use is still Windows XP (32 bit version,) with close-to 33% of users still favouring it.
As the newer graphics technologies of DirectX 10 and 11 are not available for Windows XP, this obviously creates a certain amount of tension between developers who are seeking to use the latest code, and games players who do not feel the need to upgrade.
Recent DirectX 10-only titles such as Just Cause 2 do not appear to have weakened XP’s grip on the market.
