According to the January figures released by trend analytics firm Net Applications, the desktop operating system (OS) market-share of Microsoft's new Windows 8 software still continues to be fairly low, though the OS has been witnessing a steady increase each month.

Going by the Net Applications statistics, Windows 8 OS currently holds just about 2.26 percent of the desktop OS market; as against the nearly 44.5 percent share of its predecessor, the Windows 7 OS which was launched four years back and has been seeing a gradual fall month after month.

However, despite the fact that the desktop OS market share of the late October-launched Windows 8 continues to be rather low, the latest figures have revealed that the share of the OS has been recording modest increases month on month.

The 2.26 percent market share of Windows 8, as per the most recent Net Applications figures, equates to approximately 60 million licenses, excluding Enterprise Agreement or volume license sales; and in around 42 days, Microsoft managed to sell as many as 20 million additional licenses.

While the 60 million licenses figures do not specify the respective figures for desktop PCs and Surface tablets, the statistics are still quite impressive. But, with the increasing uptake and smartphones and tablets having resulted in rather weak PC sales over the last few quarters, Windows 8 has not yet caused any notable ripples to perk up the PC manufacturing business on the whole!