Gartner: 94 Percent of New PCs Will Ship with Windows 7 in 2011

The Apple Mac is steady grabbing market share, but Windows-based systems continue to dominate the worldwide in the flesh computer commercialize, according to a new Gartner examine.

The report is keen news for Microsoft, which has condemned its licks of late in the mobile computing commercialise. Redmond's symptomless-received only long-play-selling Windows Telephone 7 OS has notwithstandin to tumble among consumers, who are snapping up Orchard apple tree iOS and Google Android handsets like smitten.

Windows 7 has verified a big pip on the desktop, however: 42 percent of PCs worldwide will run Win 7 by the end of 2011, Gartner reports. And nearly 635 million new PCs are expected to send off with the OS by the end of the twelvemonth.

After a drawn-out start, corporations are finally migrating from Windows XP to 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," said Gartner research director Annette Jump in a statement.

However, Windows 7 will likely be the last variant of Microsoft's iconic Osmium that gets deployed via massive, enterprise-wide-eyed migrations. The move toward virtual and overcast computer science architectures in the next basketball team years will change how upcoming versions of Windows are deployed, the study says.

Another long number for Windows is the rise of "OS-agnostic" applications for both consumer and enterprise PCs. As early as close twelvemonth, half of enterprise apps won't atomic number 4 tied to any particular operating system. In the consumer market, the proportion of OS-doubter apps already exceeds Windows-specific apps, Gartner estimates.

What Some Mac and Linux?

Apple's slice up of the orbicular PC Proto-Indo European may be small, but Mac espousal is growing above the market average. The Mack OS shipped on 3.3 percent of parvenue PCs oecumenical in 2008. That figure climbed to 4 percent in 2010, and to 4.5 percent this year–and it's projected to grown to 5.2 percent by 2020, Gartner says.

The Mac's popularity varies by region, however. Its strongest back is in North America and Western Europe, but its fastest emergence may occur in or s emerging countries where its current base is small. Gartner attributes the Mac's rise not exclusively to its promiscuous-to-use port, merely also to its integration with Apple mobile devices such American Samoa the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Gartner is less optimistic near Linux, which it predicts testament remain a recess OS ended the next five eld with a global share below 2 percent. In the consumer market, Linux will be a not-entity with less than 1 percent of the Microcomputer market. End users didn't payoff to Linux-based mini-notebooks, or netbooks, and nowadays few mini-notes ship with Linux.

Liaison Jeff Bertolucci via Twitter (@jbertolucci) surgery at jbertolucci.blogspot.com.