UK PC market to get Windows 10-fuelled boost within a year

Analyst Context claims that once businesses have completed testing programmes, hardware purchasing will follow

The UK PC market will enjoy a boost towards the beginning of 2017, according to Context, which claims that once Windows 10 testing is complete, IT departments will upgrade hardware.

The analyst says that in the UK business channel, Windows 10 has 58 per cent market share, when including "pure" Windows 10, and the "downgradable" version which allows business to upgrade in their own time. In the UK consumer space, the new OS has a 97 per cent share of the market.

The business segment is trailing consumer adoption because of the lengthy test-and-development period that companies need to complete before a rollout, said Context's head of person systems group Marie-Christine Pygott.

She added that once this is complete, the UK channel can expect healthier PC sales.

"It would be nice for the market if it created a push in sales earlier, but it wasn't expected," she said.

"When will this push actually happen? At the moment, expectations are for the end of this year and the beginning of next year. We will see companies refresh at that point in time. But at the moment, companies are testing. Hopefully we will see an effect on hardware sales coming in the business space.

"Feedback on the OS itself is pretty good, from what we hear; it's just that the overall market conditions are a bit slow at the moment."