Business PCs are still on Windows 10 as D-Day nears

With days to go before Microsoft finally pulls the plug on Windows 10 support, there are hundreds of millions of computers that have yet to upgrade to Windows 11, despite the best efforts of hardware manufacturers and the operating system's marketers.

On October 14, Microsoft will issue the final updates and security fixes, after which business customers will be forced to pay for extended security updates at $61 for the following 12 months. This doubles to $122 for year two and doubles again for year three.

Microsoft previously revealed a total population of 1.4 billion Windows devices worldwide – consumers and businesses. Omdia calculates that 550 million of these machines are running in corporations and around half of those will not meet the end-of-life deadline to switch to Windows 11, analyst Kieren Jessop told The Register.

"Globally, 47 to 50 percent of commercial PCs are on Windows 11," he said, highlighting geographic differences. "In the US it's close to 60 percent now and in EMEA it may be 65 percent." The upgrade path is less well trodden in "emerging markets."

Omdia reached this figure by tracking market shipments, studying replacement cycles and net new purchases based on 25 years of data.

Jessop estimates that around 20 percent of those machines that don't upgrade in time do not meet the hardware requirements to install Windows 11, as specified by Microsoft: the requisite Trusted Platform Module and a relatively modern CPU.

Businesses, he said, "have other budget priorities" than replacing PCs. "Businesses have a lot of things on their plate at the moment," he added.

Jessop told us fewer than 30 percent of Windows users were running Windows 7 when its support ran out on January 14, 2020, because there were no changes in hardware requirements to migrate to Windows 10.

Average selling price increases for PCs may have hindered sales. Lenovo, Dell, and HP rolled out AI-capable devices and Microsoft introduced Copilot+ devices. None of these have shipped in the volumes manufacturers expected. A lack of killer applications in addition to the price tag have deterred buyers.

• Brits sitting on £1.6B gold mine of Windows 10 junk as support ends
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• Windows 10 refuses to go gentle into that good night

The general commercial refresh has held up shipments this year, Jessop said, but the upgrade wave isn't as high as it once was. Recent Context figures show that adoption is gaining some traction. Omdia projects compound annual growth rates for the global PC market of 1.1 percent to 2029.

Sources told us that in addition to commercial customers, the installed base of Windows 10 devices still in the public sector is sizeable.

Jessop said businesses have budgeted to pay for ESUs for a year but as the cost swells it will be more sensible to buy a new device.

A campaign group representing hundreds of business customers in Europe and the US called on Microsoft to extend the life of Windows 10 beyond next week, and though consumers in the European Economic Area were given a reprieve, businesses were not. ®