Half of all PCs Will be Running Windows 7 by Year-end?

According to the research firm Gartner, Windows 7 is expected to become the leading operating system worldwide by the end of this year. In fact, 42% of all PCs will be running Windows 7. Gartner is claiming that this is a result of increased Windows 7 deployment in the enterprise setting.

“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,” Gartner stated in a statement.

According to Gartner, due to the improvements in IT budgets over the last year, Windows 7 has seen an increase in deployment in the enterprise sector. Economic problems in Europe and political problems in the Middle East and Africa will likely slow the Windows 7 deployment in those regions.

Back in April of this year, Windows 7 had finally taken over the top position from the widely-used Windows XP in the US. To give you an idea of XP’s popularity, Windows Vista was never able to take over. The data from StatCounter for the first seven days of April shows Windows 7 with a 31.71% share compared to 31.56% for Windows XP. StatCounter bases its data on visitor stats from over three million websites.

Looks like Microsoft will be getting its wish soon enough. Microsoft has wanted Windows XP to phase out completely for a while now, especially in the enterprise setting. The funny thing is, by the time Windows 7 takes over, Windows 8 will be out and Microsoft will be set on dethroning Windows 7.