I do this chart each year based on my newsletter subscribers. It shows the version of Crystal Reports that they were using when they signed up for the newsletter. Over time, it shows which versions have staying power and how quickly new versions take hold. I have included numbers for 2017, even though the year is only about half way there. Those numbers will change in next year’s chart when 2016 is complete.
The chart shows that over 40% of my 2017 subscribers are using Crystal Reports XI, which is over 10 years old. I was concerned that some users might really be on CR 2011 and confused the numbers. Those two versions get confused quite often. So I Emailed some of those people to see if that was a factor, but so far I haven’t heard from anyone who made that mistake.
I think the main factor is probably related to the runtime engine. For some CR customers, upgrading past XI would be a major undertaking, because all the newer versions are limited to the .NET runtime. Customers built an application around the older runtime engine would have to rebuild their app in order to upgrade to a later version of CR.