OS Market Share...What's Going on?

Just for fun, I visited Netmarketshare.com to see how OS "adoption" has changed in January when compared to December's figures.  Well, the results were quite interesting:

Linux had 1.73% in December.  Last month it grabbed 1.6%.  That means a loss of 0.13%.  Oh, well!

Mac OS X 10.9 increased its share 0.41%.  It went from 2.79% to 3.2%.

The generally hated Vista refuses to die: it went down from 3.61% to 3.3% (-0.31).


Even if it was only 0.04%, Windows 7 actually fell for the first time!  It went down from 47.52% in December to 47.49% in January. Now, that is weird! Are Windows users finally shifting to Windows 8?

That is a hasty conclusion, I'd say.  Windows 8 went down from 6.89% to 6.63% (-0.26%).  Of course, Windows 8.1 seems to be grabbing 8's share: it went up from  3.6% to 3.95% (+0.35%).  What's up with this slow adoption?  Yes, I know...let's sing together the perennial mantra: "it's too early....to tell...it's too early...to tell".

Still, I hear people celebrate such sluggish progress saying "8.1 passed Vista!!  Yay!".  Are these people delusional?

Let me put it easy to understand (although not easy to digest for some):  Vista, in its good times, reached 19.01%! Yes, that's without the gigantic marketing campaign, the UEFI lock in, the Surface, and the "mysterious" disappearance of systems running Windows 7 from most store shelves...all that aimed at "helping" Windows 8 adoption. 

Given their current adoption rates, will 8 or 8.1 ever reach that number? That means 8.1 would need a steady growth of 1.3% each month for a year to overcome that number. Will it be able to? (Remember, Windows 9 is due for 2015).

Now, the biggest surprise was Windows XP.  It went up against all odds: it grabbed 29.23% from a previous 28.98% in December (+0.25%)
What does that mean?  Late adopters???

Go figure! (no pun intended :P)