Figures supplied by Net Applications show the market share of the decade-old Windows XP operating system sinking to a new low of 46.5 percent for the month of December. As reported by Computerworld, the overall market share of XP has declined by nearly six percent since the beginning of September, compared to 3.4 percent for the May through August period; the figures show an accelerating pace of users leaving Windows XP.

Gartner Research earlier this year predicted an uptake of Windows 7, citing a "large volume" of Windows 7 migrations from earlier versions of the Windows operating system due to take place in Q4 this year. At that time, Gartner Research Director Annette Jump said in a statement that "many enterprises have been planning their deployment of Windows 7 for the last 12 to 18 months, and are now moving rapidly to Windows 7."

This prediction appears to be borne out by the figures, which shows Windows 7 reaching a historic high of 37 percent of the desktop market share last month. However, this still falls short of Gartner's prediction of 42 percent of PCs running on Windows 7 by the end of 2011. This could be partially due to businesses still holding out for the arrival of Windows 8 despite repeated exhortations by Microsoft not to wait for Windows 8 to upgrade from XP.

For more:
- check out this article at Computerworld
- check out this article at CNNMoney

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