Windows 10 passes the 15-year-old Windows XP in popularity

Windows 10 came out in July 2015, and it's already achieved a major milestone by Microsoft's standards.

It's now used on more PCs than the 15-year-old Windows XP, as you can see in this chart from Statista based on NetMarketShare data.

Why has Windows XP been so remarkably persistent?

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First, companies loved it because it was the first Windows PC operating system to be based on Windows NT technology - the same technology that Microsoft had used for servers and high-end business PCs called workstations in the 1990s.

Second, there was a five-year gap between XP and Vista, and Vista had a lot of flaws so people didn't upgrade.

Windows 7, released in 2009, picked off a lot of the XP holdouts, but there are still enough left that passing XP is somewhat of an achievement.

By way of comparison, Windows 8 and 8.1. combined didn't pass Windows XP until May 2015 - nearly three years after Windows 8 was released.

Statista