Roughly one billion PCs are not running Windows 11, according to the latest earnings call from Dell.
Windows 10 support ended in October, but around 1 billion PCs are still running the operating system. That figure comes from Dell's latest earnings call and suggests Microsoft will have an uphill battle to convert users to the latest version of the operating system.
"We have about 500 million of them capable of running Windows 11 that haven't been upgraded," said Dell COO Jeffrey Clarke during the company's Q3 earnings call. "And we have another 500 million that are four years old that can't run Windows 11. Those are all rich opportunities to upgrade towards Windows 11 and modern technology. Equally important AIPCs."
Clarke was referring to all Windows PCs, not just computers made by Dell. The COO did not share exact figures, but some quick math places the number of Windows 10 PCs that have not been updated to Windows 11 to around 1 billion.
The Motley Fool shared a transcript of the entire Dell earnings call.
That's actually an improvement compared to just a few months ago. In July of this year, a study said that about 50% of all PCs were still on Windows 10. Statcounter figures show that Windows 11 only passed Windows 10 in desktop market share in June.
Many Windows 10 PCs cannot upgrade to Windows 11 due to the strict hardware requirements of the newer OS.
(Image credit: Future)
At one point, a mass migration to Windows 11 was expected before the operating system's end of support. But that shift may have been delayed by Microsoft offering a year of Windows 10 security updates for free.
Even if the approximately 500 million PCs that can upgrade are updated eventually, there will still be roughly an additional 500 million PCs stuck on Windows 10, according to Dell. Clarke said the situation presents "rich opportunities to upgrade towards Windows 11 and modern technology."
While newer devices have many improvements compared to aging PCs, many are upset about systems from this decade already losing support.
Windows lead Pavan Davuluri said during Microsoft Ignite that almost 1 billion people rely on Windows 11. Davuluri did not mention that the number could surge to 2 billion people if Microsoft changed the hardware requirements for Windows 11 or could convince people to upgrade around 500 million eligible PCs.
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