How many PCs will still be running Windows 7 in 2020?

[Karlston]

How many PCs will still be running Windows 7 in 2020?

A hundred million here, a half-billion there: Calculating the installed base of PCs, including those still running Windows 7, is a tricky task, filled with uncertainty. After clearing away the noise, I think I’ve got a reliable estimate.

 

Microsoft has said for years that its customer base includes 1.5 billion Windows users. Among pundits and analysts, this number is often treated as authoritative and precise. It is not.

 

It is, rather, an aspirational bit of rhetoric, called forth when Microsoft's senior management wants to emphasize the sheer size of the Windows customer base to motivate its workforce or rev up its partners. Satya Nadella's invocation at a Windows 10 event in January 2016 is a perfect example of the genre:

The fact that there are 1.5 billion users of Windows is incredible and humbling.  It's a responsibility that none of us at Microsoft take lightly.

Microsoft executives have, unsurprisingly, focused mostly on the growth of its Windows 10 installed base, reporting steady growth over the past five years. The company can be extremely confident about that metric, thanks to the update and telemetry components built into every copy of Windows 10. (Microsoft's "monthly active devices" metric counts devices that have been in contact with Microsoft's servers in the past 28 days.)

 

These statements are also material representations from a publicly traded company, so they're vetted by lawyers and likely to be accurate. Making a material misrepresentation about the performance of a core business unit is the sort of thing that brings down the wrath of regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

 

As of September 24, 2019, Microsoft officials said that more than 900 million active devices were running Windows 10. That figure includes 40-50 million Xbox One consoles, an insignificant number of HoloLens and Surface Hub devices, and a rapidly shrinking population of Windows Phones. After making those adjustments, let's call it 850 million Windows PCs.

 

That number has been increasing by about 100 million every six months, and usage statistics I've reviewed show that the pace is ticking up slightly as the Windows 7 deadline nears. Given those trends, it's reasonable to project that the number of active Windows 10 devices will be over a billion by the end of the first calendar quarter of 2020.

 

But how does that number compare to the current Windows installed base? After reviewing all the available evidence, I'm convinced that the current installed base of Windows PCs as we head into 2020 is down significantly since its peak and is probably close to 1.2 billion today.

 

A decade ago, when the PC era was in full swing, Microsoft executives regularly shared the company's estimates of how many Windows PCs were in use worldwide.

 

For example, then-CEO Steve Ballmer told financial analysts in mid-2007 that the Windows installed base was approaching 1 billion and that the company expected to cross that threshold by mid-2008.

 

The reported number of Windows users went up to 1.25 billion at the end of 2011 and had increased again to 1.5 billion by the end of 2014. Five years later, that public number has not gone up, and executives rarely mention it. In short, if you're looking for the highwater mark in the PC era, 2014 is a pretty good place to zero in.

 

Every bit of available data since that time says the Windows installed base is declining, although probably not as steeply as it grew in its heyday. One obvious deduction from that 2015 number is the population of roughly 70 million Windows Phones, almost all of which have long since been retired or replaced.

 

Businesses are mostly in PC replacement mode, often using hardware upgrades as an excuse to migrate PCs to a new operating system. One of the biggest replacement cycles in enterprise PCs in recent memory is happening now, as companies and government institutions migrate their workers from older Windows versions (mostly Windows 7) to Windows 10.

 

Some old machines are being retired and are not being replaced, especially in the consumer space. Enthusiasts who used to have multiple PCs now have only one or two. In consumer households, smartphones and tablets are handling the majority of computing tasks these days. Aging PCs, if they're replaced at all, are as likely to be swapped out for iPads and Macs (and perhaps even Chromebooks) rather than a Windows PC from Dell, HP, Lenovo, or Microsoft.

 

How do you measure the shrinkage in the PC population? One way is to look at PC sales based on the average useful life of the current population. For this estimate, I assume that 95% of PCs sold seven years ago are no longer in active use. According to Gartner's estimates, OEMs shipped 351 million PCs in 2012. Seven years later, at the end of 2019, Gartner's estimates of PC shipments for the trailing four quarters total less than 260 million for the year. Allowing for some of those old PCs to still be at work, that's a gap of about 75 million PCs dropping out of the installed base.

 

The numbers are similar for a year earlier: In 2011 the PC industry shipped 353 million PCs; seven years later, in 2018, the total was below 260 million.

 

In the five years since Microsoft hit its high of 1.5 billion customers, I think it's reasonable, even conservative, to assume that the PC population worldwide has shrunk by about 60 million every year, which means there are probably no more than 1.2 billion Windows PCs in use worldwide today.

 

If my estimates are accurate -- 1.2 billion Windows PCs worldwide, with 1 billion running Windows 10 -- then Microsoft will have successfully migrated more than 80% of its active customers to Windows 10 by the middle of 2020. Roughly 200 million PCs worldwide will still be running older Windows versions, mostly Windows 7.

 

That estimate lines up nicely with the most recent real-time traffic reports available from the United States Government's Digital Analytics Program, which is the world's largest credible source reporting actual, unfiltered web traffic analytics. The dataset includes nearly 700 million visits from Windows devices to a broad mix of sites for the six-week period ending December 14; the list includes sites that attract non-business visitors, including the National Weather Service and NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day; destinations designed for individuals doing government business (passport applications and Social Security claims, for example); and sites like the National Science Foundation and Centers for Disease Control, which serve businesses and educational institutions. It also includes visits to widely popular sites that cut across population lines, like the United States Postal Service and the Internal Revenue Service.

 

Here's what the mix looked like:

Based on U.S. Government website traffic, nearly 1 in 5 visitors who use PCs are running Windows 7. 

Data from US Digital Analytics Program

Do those numbers match up perfectly with the Windows installed base at large? No one knows for sure, of course, but I suspect any differences would be minor, probably no more than a few percentage points.

 

Meanwhile, I still see people citing data from NetMarketShare and StatCounter Global Stats. I addressed my reasons for skepticism about these data sources nearly three years ago, in January 2017, and nothing I've seen lately leads me to change my mind. For November 2019, StatCounter GS shows the Windows 10/Windows 7 split at 64.7% and 27.4%, while NetMarketShare's (normalized) numbers show Windows 10 usage at 62% with Windows 7 at 31.2%.

 

The only way either number would be consistent with Microsoft's reported base of 850-900 million active Windows 10 PCs is if the worldwide base of Windows PCs were nearly 1.4 billion. A much more likely explanation is that botnets masquerading as Windows 7 PCs are skewing the results. That's an ongoing problem for both sites, which are driven by advertising networks.

 

NetMarketShare, for example, notes that 76% of the sites in its population "participate in pay per click programs to drive traffic to their sites." That provides a powerful motive for scammers to rig the statistics. On its About page, NetMarketShare acknowledges that reality: "Bots and fraudulent traffic are responsible for a large and growing percentage of web traffic," and the only question is what percentage of the fake clicks are able to evade these anti-fraud measures.

 

Regardless of which numbers you find most believable, the inescapable reality is that by the middle of 2020 hundreds of millions of PCs will be running an unsupported Windows version. That's a massive target for online crooks, and a challenge for anyone who's worried about the health of the PC ecosystem.

 

 

Source: How many PCs will still be running Windows 7 in 2020? (ZDNet - Ed Bott)

[steven36]

No body really knows  i have a Windows 7 PC here ive not turned on in years nothing is wrong with it just i cant use  but one PC at a time.  Then you got  some people who have PCs with Windows 7but they mitigated  to smartphones.  Heck thry a bunch PCs collecting dust with XP even because i have one of those too I have 4 computers in my computer  room . One with Linux , One with Linux and windows 8.1 , One with Windows 7 , One with XP  .  And we also have a windows 7 laptop on my network  being used everyday.

[coromonadalix]

I have to keep one windows xp and one win 7 pc for old programmer stuff, they arent easy to run in a virtual machine ...

[dhjohns]

I haven't used Windows 7 in so long I forget what it looks like.  I do remember the start menu was annoyingly difficult to customize.  I eventually gave up, and just created tool bars.  They looked surprising like the Windows 10 current start menu.  I think I was on to something!   

[cosy]

I'm still using my Windows 95 PC, and all is still running well 😂

[Israeli_Eagle]

I would still clearly prefer Win7, was for sure the best OS so far. But indirectly my upgraded hardware forced me to W10, otherwise some drivers simply not exist anymore or work only very limited.

Luckily there are still the registry and some very useful tools to clean it, so of course my system never allows any MS Store trash. And there are better alternatives for example to get back a full & usable Start Menu (Open-Shell Menu). After weeks to fix & clean everything (incl all spyware) works fine again.

[funkyy]

I'll probably still be running Windows 7 in 2030!!!

[bubbada]

Wouldn't it be funny when windows 7 support date is reached then windows 10 explorer stuffs up for good.😆

on that note how many patches does a windows system need to keep its file explorer working.😏

[Ryrynz]

2 hours ago, Israeli_Eagle said:

I would still clearly prefer Win7, was for sure the best OS so far.

 

Clearly the best? 10 (1903/1909) demolishes it in AFAIC every respect.. I don't even think it's a fair fight.

[cosy]

As a long time beta tester for most of the windows versions, we had more work done with Windows XP as the rest.

For me the completest Windows which was delivered to the public as near to completion was "Windows XP"

[Israeli_Eagle]

4 hours ago, Ryrynz said:

 

Clearly the best? 10 (1903/1909) demolishes it in AFAIC every respect.. I don't even think it's a fair fight.

 

W10 tries to demolish any privacy & stability, that's for sure. 

 

2 hours ago, cosy said:

For me the completest Windows which was delivered to the public as near to completion was "Windows XP"

 

Only forgot 64-Bit which is now already 10 years standard... 

[lurch234]

18 hours ago, Karlston said:

is incredible and humbling.  It's a responsibility that none of us at Microsoft take lightly.

 

Yeah, right! Cultist leaders are less deceitful then you are (Micro$oft) and for much less money at that 🤣

 

 

[steven36]

6 hours ago, cosy said:

As a long time beta tester for most of the windows versions, we had more work done with Windows XP as the rest.

For me the completest Windows which was delivered to the public as near to completion was "Windows XP"

That's because people stayed on XP longer  it got 14 years support more than any windows  ever made . And it had bad security problems with viruses  up tell  XP SP2 was released  Windows 98 was only  supported for eight years  , Windows 98 Se  only got 7 years  and  windows Me  only got 6 years support they was going to kill windows 98  in 6 years but it got 2 more years extended  .  Vista and  Windows 7 got 10 years  Windows 10 versions only get 18 months unless it's a Enterprise version not made  for consumers .  Windows 7 and  Windows 8.1 never had virus problems like Windows XP   so they only  got one major upgrade  that were just quality fixes  . XP had 3  SP were  they plugged security  holes , windows 10  has had way more regressions from patching security  holes than windows 7 or Windows 8.1 ever did.

[cosy]

32 minutes ago, steven36 said:

windows 10  has had way more regressions from patching security  holes than windows 7 or Windows 8.1 ever did.

 

Exactly, that is what I expressed in my views above, if you got it right.

Most of these windows you are all listing, were released before they were fully finished for  a final release, (so, we were using these products with updates  all the way-meaning the customer was doing "beta-testing for MS)

I'm not objecting to the SPs, which were being made from time to time, today, we have a brighter knowledge of the OS- we see "rings" etc, which wasn't the case those past days until Windows 10.

Windows 7 was a product after XP, so MS had a brighter spectrum of ideas and knowledge of their OS (don't forget, MS had to come up with something knew too)

then comes Windows 10, which in my opinion was built from "Zero" to make everything look differently (you can recall all the versions released, up to now, some releases were actually against the advice of the testers-many were taken by surprise)

Thank you for your insight on this

[steven36]

18 minutes ago, cosy said:

Windows 7

All Windows  7 was  is Vista SP3  , Vista never was finished  it came out before people had hardware  that could handle it , everybody had old   boxes  made for XP   and devs had not made  software for it yet ether . It ended up being a victim of Microsoft's  technology  being way ahead of the consumers  hardware , So they  changed the name to Windows 7  to get rid of the bad stigma., Same with Windows 8.1 it  is a unfinished version of Windows 10 that was  a victim of  telemetry . From telemetry they took from windows 7 they seen people were pining programs  instead of using the start menu so they removed it in Windows 8. But it was the beginning   of a hybrid OS with Win32  and mobile apps , Windows 10 wont never be finished  it seems.

[funkyy]

steven36 said "Windows 10 wont never be finished it seems" (sic)....God finished the universe in less time than Microsoft will take to finish Windows 10.

[Ryrynz]

11 hours ago, funkyy said:

steven36 said "Windows 10 wont never be finished it seems" (sic)....God finished the universe in less time than Microsoft will take to finish Windows 10.

 

You can't "finish" an OS.. If you do that it's dead. Joke falling flat I'm afraid.

[Karlston]

1 hour ago, Ryrynz said:

You can't "finish" an OS..

 

You can, in the sense of freezing the feature set, meaning no new functionality is added and the focus changes to bug fixing. Stability is the biggest benefit, something that's been suggested as one of the main problems with 10 and Microsoft's WaaS methodology.

 

From Freeze (software engineering) ...

 

Quote

A (complete) feature freeze, in which all work on adding new features is suspended, shifting the effort towards fixing bugs and improving the user experience. The addition of new features may have a disruptive effect on other parts of the program, due both to the introduction of new, untested source code or resources and to interactions with other features; thus, a feature freeze helps improve the program's stability.

 

Historically, Microsoft has done that with its OS, except perhaps when 8 morphed to 8.1, though that was to fix two incredibly poor design decisions that didn't need hindsight.

[funkyy]

12 hours ago, Ryrynz said:

 

You can't "finish" an OS.. If you do that it's dead. Joke falling flat I'm afraid.

Why so serious? Most jokes aren't based on reality.

[Norfdas]

Have only one Win 10 for daily use but one laptop that runs Vista, tried to install 10 on the laptop but the keyboard went a little unusable so i went back.

It runs OK and I have decided to take all of my older stationary that runs 7 and XP to the place that take care of electronics that no longer in use.

Going to make my apartment a lot easier to navigate.

[aliyx]

Most unsafe OS is on Smartphone Android, IOS ..  Win 7 is clearly secure as a Smartphone

[Ryrynz]

On 1/5/2020 at 8:07 PM, Karlston said:

 

You can, in the sense of freezing the feature set

Then what, a new version? My comment stands. New features whether in service of added usability or extra security = new code, new code = potential for bugs and possibly the exploitation of them..

You can't win, an OS must evolve or die being "done" doesn't make it better. Everyone knows 10 was the final version as far as old school Windows goes with updates being done "as a service" I don't think it will be "done" until something replaces it which could be decades away. I'm very happy with how things are going with 10 and where it stands today in relation to everything that came before it, it leaves all previous Windows versions in the dust AFAIC @1903/1909.

[Karlston]

1 hour ago, Ryrynz said:

Then what, a new version?

 

Yes, like Windows before 10.

 

1 hour ago, Ryrynz said:

New features whether in service of added usability or extra security = new code, new code = potential for bugs and possibly the exploitation of them.

 

So we’re in agreement then?  Windows 10 adds new features and things break, history shows that. Maybe not for you or not for many users, but it does happen and sometimes badly, and I’d suggest a lot more often than in previous versions of Windows where the feature set was frozen before official release.

 

My upcoming build will have to have Windows 10. But, I will use a stable LTSC version and update it only when updates are proven to be bug-free. And a full image backup before every update.

 

I just want my Windows install to be a stable platform for the software and hardware I choose.

[Ryrynz]

22 hours ago, Karlston said:

I just want my Windows install to be a stable platform for the software and hardware I choose.

 

Based on what 20H1 has become it looks like MS has scaled back the scope of changes between builds and is testing the more sweeping changes over a longer period of time which

should result in less issues with publicly released builds going forward. Windows is still Windows regardless of it's version number