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Reuters claims:

Windows XP currently supports around 95 percent of the world's ATMs.

Is that true?

In the same article, it is said:

The U.S. software company first warned that it was planning to end support for Windows XP in 2007, but only one-third of the world's 2.2 million ATMs which use the system will have been upgraded to a new platform, such as Windows 7 by the April deadline, according to NCR, one of the biggest ATM makers.

It find it hard to believe that over 28% (=33-5) of ATM worldwide can be upgraded in less than one month and a half. Hence I wonder whether 95 percent of the world's ATMs still use Windows XP currently.

Franck Dernoncourt
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    You have a report by a credible news agency citing credible sources, specifying their names or positions. Why are you doubtful of the claim? – SIMEL Mar 15 '14 at 20:26
  • Details added. Also, the source for "Windows XP currently supports around 95 percent of the world's ATMs." is not clearly mentioned (Athreya?), and at best the quote is indirect. – Franck Dernoncourt Mar 15 '14 at 20:37
  • I have seen a couple of ATMs that had crashed, with the XP screen and an Internet Explorer(!!!) error message displayed. I worry al LOT more about IE than about XP. I wonder how often they update IE?? – hdhondt Mar 16 '14 at 22:22
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    I'm not necessarily a respresentative sample, but everytime I've seen them crash, they've been running 2000. – Owen C. Jones Mar 17 '14 at 16:37
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    @Alex there's nothing inherently wrong with using Windows on an ATM. Especially because it is likely Windows XP Embedded which is designed specifically for devices like ATMs. – MDMarra Mar 17 '14 at 23:57
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    Note that ATMs will not use the "normal" version of XP which will be EOL an 2014-04-08, but [XP Embedded](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP_Embedded#Windows_XP_Embedded), which has a later EOL. – Martin Schröder Mar 18 '14 at 12:48
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    @Alex: what if I told you that US Navy ship(s?) equipped with nuclear missiles have at one point been under control of Windows NT. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Yorktown_(CG-48)#Smart_ship_testbed – vartec Mar 18 '14 at 13:40
  • @vartec - it's no surprise: when those systems are spec'd and approved, they are also locked at those software rev levels for a long long time, since getting recertified is so timeconsuming – warren Mar 21 '14 at 19:40
  • @warren: I was referring to fact that they've used Windows, rather than which version. I'd find something like QNX more natural selection at the time. Or Linux RT, which is what ultimately they ended up using – vartec Mar 21 '14 at 20:03

1 Answers1

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Unfortunately, I could not find any world-wide data. However, the reputable German IT news site Heise says they have a report of the German Credit Association dated November 2013, which "seems to imply that almost all ATMs in Germany run on Windows 2000 or Windows XP".

Germany might not be typical; it is a developed country, which could either mean that its infrastructure is better then average, or conversely, that the infrastructure is well-established and thus older than average. If, however, we assume it to be representative, we can say that an overwhelming majority of ATMs run Windows XP or older.

P_S
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