Why Gartner Believes Windows 10 Adoption Will Remain Robust

A new Gartner study looks at the success of Microsoft’s recently ended Windows 10 free-upgrade offer—and what the OS’ growth prospects are now that the offer has ended.

In the run-up to Windows 10’s free-upgrade expiration, 70 percent of companies said their chief reason for adopting the operating system was security. In fact, the study argues that companies view Windows 10 as a more-secure operating system than previous versions of Windows.

Enterprises don’t seem to be particularly concerned that they will need to pay to upgrade their current stock of PCs now that the free upgrade period has expired. Gartner says that at least 80 percent of corporate customers will at least start Windows 10 deployment at the beginning of 2017. They anticipate being done by 2019, putting Windows 10’s full-scale adoption rate about six months ahead of Windows 7’s.

Two-in-one hybrids are part of the reason companies are migrating more quickly to Windows 10. A Gartner study found that 45 percent of respondents believe two-in-one devices can deliver a better productivity experience for corporate users and cite the device as an important reason for upgrading to Windows 10.

Although companies will upgrade existing computers, Gartner’s study finds that Windows 10 is also prompting companies to buy new computers to keep up with the power the operating system affords. In particular, Gartner predicts companies will increasingly buy notebooks and “ultramobile” PCs in the coming years.

Currently, consumer PC sales are slightly higher than business PC sales, according to Gartner. However, thanks to Windows 10, business PCs will increase their share to 55 percent of total sales by 2020. At the end of 2015, 49 percent of all PCs were purchased by businesses.

On average, companies, particularly larger organizations, say that they’ll replace approximately 40 percent of their existing computers by the end of 2017. As noted, hybrids, ultramobiles and lightweight notebooks will make up the majority of those purchases.

By June 2016, more than 40 percent of U.S. consumers had upgraded their current computers to Windows 10, according to a joint study between Gartner and Google. It’s unclear, however, how many more consumers will take the leap now that they need to pay for the operating system.

Surprisingly, consumer PCs running Windows 10 are old. In fact, the Gartner-Google study, which surveyed more than 1,100 people, found that the average upgraded consumer PC was more than 4 years old.

The issue for Windows PC makers is that all those old PCs are running Windows 10 without trouble. In fact, 50 percent of respondents said that Windows 10 is running so well on their older computers that they have no reason to buy new computers. Another 50 percent of respondents showed no desire to upgrade to Windows 10 anytime soon.

That, of course, brings us to the PC market as a whole. Due to the confluence of consumers not looking to upgrade to new computers, the fact that Windows 10 works so well on older PCs and the corporate world’s upgrade plans, the PC market likely won’t rebound anytime soon. In fact, the market, which has experienced several years of declining shipments, is unlikely to rebound until later into 2017 or 2018, Gartner predicts.