Windows Phone 8.1, the latest version of Microsoft’s mobile operating system has finally reached a 50% market share among the handsets using the company’s platform, TechCrunch reports. According to the report, the previous version of the mobile OS is still running on 33.5% of the Microsoft-powered phones of the world, while Windows Phone 7 still runs on 15.7% of Windows Phone handsets out there. The proportion of phones using the previous version of the WP OS will slowly decline in the near future, as carriers gradually roll out the update to the latest version.

Windows Phone 8.1 accounted for more than 50 percent of all Windows Phone usage in November. It closed October with 46.7 percent of the market. Windows Phone 8, its predecessor, still controls 33.5 percent of the Windows Phone base. That amount will decline as more carriers update phones that were initially sold with an earlier version of the Windows Phone platform. Also worth noting in the above data is the 95 percent of the market that Microsoft controls. Microsoft wants both its gross sales figures to rise, and its percentage of the Windows Phone market to decrease. Microsoft would be far happier to sell twice the phones, at 80 percent of the market, than sell a few more, and control 95 percent — third-party OEM support is critical to the long-term health of Windows Phone. That’s not conjecture. The company wouldn’t be working to expand OEM uptake of Windows Phone if it didn’t want to see a more diverse manufacturer base for the platform.