While Windows 10 adoption continues to make strides among consumers, the same is not true in businesses, where upgrading to a new operating system is typically a more complex process that involves endless application compatibility testing and potential hardware upgrades.
A survey conducted by Spiceworks shows that Windows 10 adoption by businesses is still progressing much more slowly than Microsoft expected, while Windows 7 is still the preferred choice.
Specifically, Spiceworks reports that Windows 7 is the top choice in the business sector with a share reaching 69 percent, while Windows XP comes in second with a share of 14 percent. Windows 10 is in third place with 9 percent, followed by Windows 8 with 5 percent, Mac OS, Vista, and others, with 1 percent each.
In other words, Windows XP has more users in the business market than Windows 10, even though the operating system was released in 2001 and security updates and patches stopped being released on April 8, 2014.
Regarding the Windows OS penetration rate, the survey shows that 9% of businesses are still using a version of Windows Vista (the penetration rate represents the percentage of companies that perform a new operating system installation at least once).
In addition, 52% of businesses continue to run Windows XP on at least one system, while Windows 7 reaches 87 percent.
“As expected, Windows 7 still has the highest penetration rate among enterprises worldwide at 87%, but it could lose a significant share in the near future. As we approach two years since the launch of Windows 10 (July 29, 2015), Spiceworks data shows that 54% of enterprises worldwide have adopted Windows 10 in their network usage.”
Here we should mention that Windows Vista support is coming to an end on April 11 and that Windows XP has stopped being supported since 2014. So Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 are the only versions that businesses can use for more security.
