Half of North Korea Misses Windows XP Upgrade Deadline

 

North Koreans are among those who can’t abandon Windows XP by any means and new statistics provided for the month of March 2014 come to confirm that Microsoft has a really tough mission to convince local users to upgrade.
The clock is ticking for Windows XP and end of support will be announced in just three days, but one in two computers in North Korea is still running the operating system launched 13 years ago.
StatCounter data for March 2014 shows that Windows XP currently has a 49.94 percent share in the country, so it’s clearly the dominant operating system, despite Microsoft efforts to emphasize the risks of staying with an unsupported OS version.
Windows 7 obviously comes next with 32.58 percent, while Windows 8, Vista, and Mac OS X are following closely. Almost nobody heard about Windows 8.1, as only 1.94 percent of the computers in the country are running it, so it’s hard to believe that those moving from Windows XP to a newer OS version (if someone really does that) would actually choose Windows 8.1 as their next OS version.
There’s no doubt that such a large market share for Windows XP is bad news for Microsoft, as the company has invested a fortune to make people aware that support for the operating system launched in 2001 is coming to an end.
The company has often been accused for relying on so-called “scare tactics” by warning users that their computers could get hacked if they do not upgrade, but today’s statistics confirm that only a few actually got the message and trusted Microsoft’s words.
The April 8 end of support will leave millions of computers unprotected, as worldwide a total of 27 percent of desktop PCs are still running Windows XP. While there’s still time to upgrade to a newer and more secure operating system for end users, organizations would still need a few more weeks or even months to complete the transition, so buying custom support might be a really good investment.
Microsoft has recently signed a deal with the UK government to provided extended Windows XP support for the government’s computers, and the company is reportedly negotiating with authorities in some other countries to do the same thing until all local PCs are upgraded to a newer OS version. Custom support is usually offered for another 12 months, so everyone should be off Windows XP by this time next year.