November marked the first full month of availability for Windows 8.1 since launching as a free update in late October. So how did this affect uptake of Microsoft's latest operating system? Not much according to Net Applications. While Windows 8.1 continued to eat into Windows 8's market share, collectively Windows 8.x gained a mere 0.05 points during the period, even less than Windows 7's climb of 0.22 points.
As it stands right now Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 sit at 6.66% and 2.64%, respectively, for a combined total of 9.3%. Windows 7 managed to move up slightly from 46.42% to 46.64% at the end of November, while Windows XP still clings to 31.22% of the market even as the clock ticks closer to its end-of-support date. Meanwhile, Vista continued to drop 0.06 percentage points in November and now sits at 3.57%.
There were a few other interesting bits of statistical data in this month's report. ZDNet's Ed Bott pointed to the uptake of Microsoft and Apple's free updates, for instance. Windows 8.1 now represents 28.4% of the total Windows 8.x install base while OS X 10.9 Mavericks is at 33.9% for all versions from 10.6 and above.
November was also one of the few months this year that Windows as a whole has gained market share (up 0.22%) to the expense of both OS X (down 0.17 points to 7.56%) and Linux (down 0.05 points to 1.56%).