Gartner: Win7 to become dominant OS by end-2011

Microsoft Corp.'s flagship operating system Windows 7 may become the leading PC operating system worldwide by end-2011, running on 42 percent of PCs worldwide, according to IT research firm Gartner Inc. Gartner said improvements in IT budgets and deployments in enterprise markets in the United States and Asia-Pacific may be key factors. "Steady improvements in IT budgets in 2010 and 2011 are helping to accelerate the deployment of Windows 7 in enterprise markets in the U.S. and Asia/Pacific, where Windows 7 migrations started in large volume from 4Q10," said Annette Jump, research director at Gartner. Gartner also said its latest PC OS forecast shows 94 percent of new PCs will be shipped with Windows 7 in 2011. "By the end of 2011, nearly 635 million new PCs worldwide are expected to be shipped with Windows 7. Many enterprises have been planning their deployment of Windows 7 for the last 12 to 18 months, and are now moving rapidly to Windows 7," she added. But she said economic uncertainties in Western Europe, political instability in selected Middle East and Africa (MEA) countries and the economic slowdown in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 will likely lead to slightly late and slow deployment for Windows 7 across those regions. On the other hand, Gartner hinted Windows 7 is likely to be the last version of Microsoft OS that gets deployed to everybody through big corporatewide migration. It added many organizations in the future may use alternative client computing architectures for standard PCs with Windows OS, and move toward virtualization and cloud computing in the next five years. Mac, Linux Gartner said shipments of Apple iMacs and Mac OS share on new PCs have increased in the last 12 months. Mac OS was shipped on 4 percent of new PCs worldwide in 2010 versus 3.3 percent in 2008. But now, Mac OS is forecast to be on 4.5 percent of PCs in 2011, and grow to 5.2 percent of new PCs in 2015, it said. "The adoption of Mac PCs and Mac OS is a result of Apple's ability to grow well above the market average in the last 12 to 24 months, thanks to its ease of use from the user interface (UI) point of view and ease of integration with other Apple devices, such as the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and the existing Apple ecosystem of applications and programs," Jump said. Gartner added shipments will likely grow stronger in mature markets where consumers are buying into the Apple product ecosystem. But it added the Mac OS share still varies greatly by region, with Apple having much stronger presence in North America and Western Europe. It said it expects the fastest growth in selected emerging countries, where Apple and Mac OS are growing from a small base. Linux to remain niche Gartner said Linux will likely remain niche over the next five years with its share below two percent due to the remaining high costs of application migration from Windows to Linux. "In the consumer market, Linux will be run on less than 1 percent of PCs, as Linux's success with mini-notebooks was short-lived and few mini-notebooks are preloaded with it today," it said. Chrome OS, Android Gartner said it does not expect Google's Chrome OS and Android, or webOS to get significant market share on PCs in the next few years. It said analysts believe lighter OSs will first need to get strong positions on emerging client devices such as Web books and media tablets. "Even then, it is unlikely that they will have any impact on Microsoft and Windows OS's hold on positions on traditional professional PCs in the time frame of the current forecast," it said. Gartner said this is due to application compatibility issues and the high proportion of Windows-specific applications within many enterprises. Crossover point Gartner expects the market to reach the point of crossover between Windows-specific and OS-agnostic applications for enterprises only in 2012, as 50 percent of the applications will be OS-agnostic. In the consumer space, Gartner believes that the proportion of OS-agnostic applications is already above the Windows-specific applications. "This could help Chrome OS and Android make inroads into the consumer space in the next three to five years," it said. — TJD, GMA News