14 DAY TRIAL // Windows 10 adoption has been far from overwhelming until now, but new research by Garner claims that figures are very likely to skyrocket in the coming months, especially in the enterprise sector, when it's expected to become the fastest-adopted Windows version ever.
Gartner claims that, by January 2017, 50 percent of the enterprises will have started Windows 10 deployments, which could be a sign that Microsoft might actually reach the 1 billion devices running the new OS by 2017 goal.
The research firm claims there are several factors encouraging enterprises to migrate, among which the end of support for Windows 7 in 2020, but also the excellent support that Windows 10 includes for applications developed for previous versions of the operating system.
Migration completed by 2019
Most of the enterprises starting the migration to Windows 10 by 2017 are expected to complete the process by 2019, the research shows, so by the time the end of support for Windows 7 comes, the majority of organizations should be prepared for the upgrade.
“In the consumer market, a free upgrade coupled with broad legacy device support and automatic over-the-air upgrades ensures that there will be tens of millions of users familiar with the operating system (OS) before the end of 2015,” said Steve Kleynhans, research vice president at Gartner. “For enterprises, we expect that implementation will be significantly more rapid than that seen with Windows 7 six years ago.”
As far as consumers are concerned, Windows 10 currently has a market share of approximately 9 percent, which isn’t quite as big as expected, given the fact that the new OS is offered as a free upgrade to Windows 7 and 8.1 computers.
Figures are expected to increase significantly, though, in the coming months, as Windows 7 is still running on some 50 percent of the world’s desktop PCs, and some of these users are getting ready for the upgrade to Windows 10.