While the countdown to XP end of support goes steadily down the same cannot be said for the operating system itself. It actually gained market share during the first month of 2014, despite Microsoft efforts to get users to upgrade.

The latest figures for Desktop Operating System Share from NetMarketShare showed that in January XP's share went up.

OK, it was only by a quarter of a percentage point and not really significant but its slice of the pie (it's the green one) is still remarkably health at 29%. One might at least expect the steady decrease as we approach the final cut off date to have started by now.

The other noteworthy change between December 2013 and January 2014 was that Windows 8.1 overtook Windows Vista for the first time. Vista's pie slice is now shown in light blue and it has assumed its rightful place among versions of Windows - i.e. bottom.

(click in chart to enlarge)

Vista's decline in the month was actually a tiny bit bigger than XP's gain at 0.31%, and while it isn't statistically significant, Windows 7 share declined in January by 0.03%. 

Turning to the line chart that shows the trend over the past twelve months it is however worrying that Windows 8.1 (still in light blue) seems to taking its share mainly from Windows 8. Adding Windows 8 and 8.1 together would show a better trend for the past year - going from 2.67% in February 2013 (before the availability of 8.1, through to 8.89% in September when Windows 8 peaked, to 10.49% in December 2013 and 10.58% in January.

 (click in chart to enlarge)

"Other" in this chart refers to Mac, Linux plus the operating systems lumped together in the "Other category of the pie chart which include BSD, Sun, Solaris and other minority variants of Unix.

So should Microsoft accept that XP is not going to die quietly and allow it to continue in a secure manner. By re-branding it as XP for Xtra Petite and selling it as suitable for the smaller device it might just manage to keep more of its customers loyal until Windows 9 comes along and provides an upgrade route that is more acceptable to users.

Whatever Microsoft does, the news that the operating system that it is trying to kill gains ground, even though by a negligible amount, while the operating system it is trying to sell struggles to get above its previous flop of an operating system, should be a clear message.