The percentage of people who quit using Windows XP was close to a record

'Migration' from Windows XP is accelerating in the past 4 months. Users are switching to Windows 7.

In December 2011, Microsoft again lost a large share of Windows XP when users continued to abandon the 10-year-old operating system to switch to Windows 7.

Windows XP lost 2.4 percentage points of market share, making the December 2011 average remain at 46.5%, a new low for this " senior " OS according to Net Applications . Decline of December 2011 was nearly equal to the record drop of 2.5 percentage points in October 2011.

In the last 4 months (from September to December 2011), XP lost more than 11% of its market share compared to September 1, 2011, down nearly 6 percentage points. Four months earlier (from May to August 2011), XP lost only 3.4 percentage points, or about 8.5% of the market share compared to May 1, 2011.

Windows 7 benefited from the decline of XP, up 2.4 percentage points in December 2011 to 37%. In 4 months that XP lost nearly 6 percentage points, Windows 7 rose 6.4 percentage points.

If the trend tends to repeat, Windows XP will lose a larger share of usage this month: In both 2009 and 2010, XP's market share fell 40% - 48% in January compared to the previous month, Most likely because of buying a new Windows 7 computer at the end of the year. Therefore, XP's market share can reduce by 3.5 percentage points this month.

Now, predictions based on Net Applications data show that Windows 7 will become the most widely used version in April 2012, a few months earlier than previous estimates. At the time of Windows 8 launch - probably October 2011 - Windows 7 will have between 50% and 52% of the operating system market.