Desktop PCs remain the most popular form factor for business users, according to a survey conducted by IDC in the UK, France and Germany.
Despite the growing adoption of portable devices and ultraslim notebooks, 84% of the 600 executives taking part said that would consider purchasing desktop PCs for their organisation. Higher performance, better durability, a longer lifespan (on average one year longer than a notebook) and lower prices were key factors in the decision.
Small form factors and mini PCs are still ‘key’ to the future of client computing, said IDC. 43% of respondents would consider a small form factor device, and 35% would consider a mini PC. These products are growing in popularity, as companies look to solutions that will save space and power. Specific industries are planning to deploy mini PCs for use in digital signage, or internet kiosks.
Windows 10 is set to grow in popularity; 40% of respondents said that they would upgrade in the next 12 months. Most businesses have by now moved to Windows 7, but many skipped the migration to Windows 8. Because of this, IDC notes, the need to upgrade is becoming ‘increasingly urgent’.
“The majority of companies are expected to roll out the new operating system without purchasing new hardware initially, especially as a large proportion of desktops in the commercial PC installed base should fit the requirements of Windows 10”, said Maciek Gornicki of IDC. “Some companies are likely, however, to consider rolling out new hardware at the same time due to the new Intel Skylake platform coming into the market… Together with Windows 10, this may be enough to trigger a moderate renewal wave at the beginning of 2016”.
Analyst Comment
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was finding myself tempted to upgrade my own PC system to Windows 10. I finally yielded to the temptation, once I had successfully upgraded VMWare Player to a new version (12) that could support some clunky old XP applications that I still need to run. The new version was said to support Windows 10. So far, there have been a couple of minor irritations finding things (the “Offline Files” controller has been hidden away and I’m not sure I’ve got all the font scaling supported properly), but mostly good things. The new “snap” features work much better than on 8.1 and I’m really happy that I no longer keep finding myself in the Windows Tile mode. (BR)
