Windows 7 is on 10% of all Business PCs

The news about Windows 7 in the corporate space has been confusing in recent months, with 50% of businesses saying they were making the switch or already had.  New research by Forrester today and reported by Ed Bott, shows a very different picture though.The chart above (click the image to view it full size) shows that only 1 in 10 business PCs are running Microsoft’s new OS.
The survey took place between June and August this year and surveyed more than 2,300 IT execs in the US, Canada, UK, Germany and France.  They found that Windows XP was still powering a massive 75% of all business computers.

As I have already mentioned, it’s been widely reported that Windows 7 has so far been doing much better in the business space and these figures will be a blow to anyone who was hoping that Windows 7 was firmly muscling XP out of the way.
Last week, Microsoft announced that they had sold 240 million licences for Windows 7 in the year since its launch, but technology blogger Paul Thurrott questioned this, saying that other research had shown over 300,000 PCs were sold every year.  He asked what was powering the other 60,000+.
Things should change after the launch of Windows 7 Service Pack 1, the traditional time when businesses consider a new OS mature enough to migrate to and, according to Forrester “an additional 42 percent of firms surveyed said they were planning to deploy Windows 7 in more than 12 months”.  In the mean time these figures are a blow to the people who are hoping to see the back of buggy-old XP.