Migration to Windows 10 is in high gear, web metrics vendor Net Applications reports-- Windows 7 PC share of all PCs is down by 3.6 percentage points in July 2019, the 2nd largest amount for a single month for the OS, bringing total share to 31.8%.
The Windows 7 portion of all Windows-based PCs is also down, specifically to 36%, the lowest since 2011 (or back when the Windows version was all of 2 years old and looking to take over from Windows XP). For the curious, according to Net Applications the share of all PCs running on Windows stands at 88.5% for July 2019, with the rest running on either macOS, Linux or Chrome OS.
In the meantime Windows 10 is making gains, with share reaching 48.9% of all PCs and 55.2% of all PCs running Windows. The monthly increase of 3.1 percentage points is the 2nd largest for the OS (1st place belongs to March 2019), and both percentages are records for Windows 10. The reason behind such a leap in Windows 10? Probably (if not surely) it is due to the looming end of support for Windows 7, set to take place on 14 January 2020.
After the date, as Microsoft puts it, "technical assistance and software updates from Windows Update that help protect your PC will no longer be available for the product." Of course, Microsoft encourages users to migrate to Windows 10 sooner, not later, in order to take advantage of all security updates, and it appears a good number of users are indeed following suit.
However, one has to point out Windows 7 PCs will still be around come the end of support. According to ComputerWorld, Windows 7 market share will be over 30% by January 2020, meaning a good number of PCs will be lacking vendor support and patches for bugs, issues and vulnerabilities. That said, the number is similar to the amount of PCs running on Windows XP back in 2014, the year Microsoft called it a day on that particular incarnation of Windows.
Go Windows by the Numbers: Finally, the 7-to-10 Migration Kicks in High Gear (ComputerWorld)
