Windows has nearly 90% market share in the world of desktops, but Windows 10 adoption rates have been slow for the last 2 years since its release, and Windows 7 continues to dominate the desktop landscape. Why is such an old version of Windows still the most popular of its kind? Is it better than Windows 10? Does it have greater security and more features? Or is the real reason something entirely different?
Let us first look at the individual market shares of each version of the Windows operating system. Windows as a whole commands 88.4% of the desktop OS market. Mac OS comes in at a distant second place with only 8.9% market share as of June 2018. Within the Windows ecosystem, Windows 7 commands more than 47% market share.
Windows 10 is certainly catching up, and according to StatCounter, Windows 10 adoption has already surpassed Windows 7 presence. Some of this data may not be entirely accurate, but it shows that Windows 7 still has a strong grip on the desktop OS market. Why is this?
One of the biggest reasons that a lot of people still use Windows 7 is because all of their older software will also need to be upgraded to be compatible with Windows 10. Depending on how many different proprietary software utilities you have installed on your Windows 7 PC, this could be an expensive affair.
The second reason is that some of your older hardware accessories and peripherals may not have the drivers to work with Windows 10. Updating them requires time and effort – not something we all have a lot of. Besides, they might not be capable of driver upgrades since hardware is constantly evolving.
Although Windows 10 was offered as a free upgrade for more than a year after its public release in 2016, most Windows 7 users remained on that version of Windows because of these two reasons.
The third reason why people stuck to Windows 7 is gaming. Most gamers prefer to remain on Windows 7 even though, ironically, Windows 10 is a much more powerful gaming platform. Another event that tipped the scales in favour of Windows 7 was the release of the game Battlegrounds by PlayerUnknown’s. When this game was released in China, a large number of users migrated to Steam and opted to switch to Windows 7.
There are several drawbacks to staying on Windows 7. Some of them have been hyped by Microsoft itself for obvious reasons, but there are also genuine reasons why staying on Windows 7 is not such a good idea. For example, the security layers on a Windows 7 machine are outdated and will soon lose update support from Microsoft. That means no more security patches will be available after a certain date, leaving these machines vulnerable to attacks by hackers. The login password would be easily cracked by software such as Androidphonesoft. Windows 10 has enhanced security features, and even the new Microsoft Edge Browser has strong security features of its own so the system is much more secure.
Nevertheless, gamers and other Windows users who still choose to continue with Windows 7 have tremendous support for the app ecosystem (x86 desktop apps) as well as from a hardware perspective. These machines will still have a few good years ahead of them, so we do not expect Windows 7 installed base to drastically drop for at least the next couple of years. However, we could see a spike in users switching from Windows 7 to Windows 10 once the security updates for Windows 7 stop coming from Microsoft. Mainstream support ended three years ago, but extended support is still available until January 14, 2020.
This is an ideal case of Microsoft shooting itself in the foot. Since Windows 7 was such a huge hit when it was released, users are reluctant to switch to a higher version. We saw this when Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 were released, and we continue to see this more than 2 years after Windows 10 was officially unveiled to the public. Unlike Apple, Microsoft doesn’t have an effective way of encouraging users to upgrade to the latest OS version. They tried forced auto-installation, but that backfired badly and the company stopped doing it after receiving bad media publicity for it.