Company provides quick stats on commercial upgrades

Feb 13, 2018 10:48 GMT  ·  By

Upgrading users from Windows 7 to Windows 10 is Microsoft’s next big challenge since the 2009 desktop operating system is set to reach end of support in January 2020, and as far as the company is concerned, things are going great right now.

With enterprises currently a priority, Microsoft says upgrades are completed on commercial computers faster than you can imagine. How fast? Since January 4, a Windows 7 computer is upgraded to Windows 10 every 0.98 seconds, according to Brad Anderson, Microsoft Vice President.

This happens with ConfigMgr, Microsoft’s set of tools to manage large groups of Windows computers, and if the same pace is maintained, Windows 7 should be running on just a small number of systems when support ends in early 2020.

And while this is indeed good news for Microsoft itself, third-party data doesn’t seem to be pointing to such a fast migration to Windows 10.

Windows 7 vs. Windows 10

NetMarketShare says last month Windows 7 was still the number one desktop operating system with a share of 42.39%, while Windows 10 was only the runner-up with 34.29%. And what’s worse is that Windows 10 seems to be improving rather slowly, while Windows 7 survives the push and declines insignificantly every month.

The upcoming updates that Microsoft will release for Windows 10, however, is expected to accelerate the rate of upgrades from Windows 7. The first such update is Redstone 4, which will land in the spring, most likely in March for insiders, while the next one will be Redstone 5 due in the fall.

Microsoft has pledged to two different major updates for Windows per year, which means by the time Windows 7 gets the ax, the company should roll out four such different releases. It remains to be seen what impact they’re going to have on Windows 7’s market share, but Microsoft is quickly running out of time to migrate computers to Windows 10.