Support lifecycle

Support for Windows XP Home edition and Professional edition without a service pack ended on September 30, 2005. Windows XP Service Pack 1 and 1a were retired on October 10, 2006 and Windows XP Service Pack 2 reached end of support on July 13, 2010, almost six years after its general availability.

The company stopped general licensing of Windows XP to OEMs and terminated retail sales of the operating system on June 30, 2008, 17 months after the release of Windows Vista. However, an exception was announced on April 3, 2008, for OEMs installing to ultra low-cost PCs (ULCPCs) until one year after the availability of Windows 7 (that is, until October 22, 2010). In July 2010, Microsoft announced that permission for volume license users to downgrade from Windows 7 to Windows XP would extend until the end of the Windows 7 lifecycle.

On April 14, 2009, Windows XP and its family of operating systems reached the end of their mainstream support period and entered the extended support phase as it marks the progression of the legacy operating system through the Microsoft Support Lifecycle Policy. During the extended support phase, Microsoft continues to provide security updates every month for Windows XP; however, free technical support, warranty claims, and design changes are no longer being offered. Extended support will end on April 8, 2014—after which no more security patches or new support information will be provided. While many organizations did not upgrade from XP due to the poor reception of Vista, Microsoft has since recommended that they migrate to newer versions of Windows due to the impending end of support. Normally Microsoft products have a support life cycle of 10 years.

Market share

According to web analytics data generated by Net Applications, Windows XP is currently the second most-used OS with a market share of 37.74%. It holds the number two spot since July 2012.

According to web analystics data generated by StatOwl, Windows XP has a 27.82% market share as of November 2012, having dropped to second place in October 2011.

According to web analytics data generated by W3Schools, from September 2003 to July 2011, Windows XP was the most widely used operating system for accessing the w3schools website, which they claim is consistent with statistics from other websites. As of April 2013, Windows XP market share is at 16.4% after having peaked at 76.1% in January 2007.