Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has taken a very major move of ending its support to Windows 7 in a similar manner as it did for Windows XP in the earlier part of the year. While the security updates will be available till 2024, the company will withdraw mainstream support to Windows 7 on the 13th of January 2015.
Will date be extended?
The official warning has come from the company for its Windows 7 customers, who are in huge numbers. The consumers will be very much affected as compared to the businesses because the latter pay for getting the extended business support, which will last for five more years till 2024. The irony of the situation is that though businesses running Windows XP and Windows Vista on their systems are willing to upgrade to later versions, but the majority prefers Windows 7 over Windows 8.
Keeping in view the fact that Windows 8 in still not as popular as Windows 7, as we reach closer to the current deadline the company might extend the support to a future date as we have noticed in the past for Windows XP which was supported for nearly 13 years.
The chances of the end date for Windows 8 getting extended to future are minimal as the Windows 8 has been developed in such a manner that that it offers full functionality of Windows 7 known as Desktop View. The users can switch between the default view and the ‘Desktop View’ at their own discretion.
Aims to boost Windows 8
Windows 8 machines have not been sold as per the company’s expectations and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is struggling to make people buy the new devices. The company sees Windows XP and Windows 7 as the major barriers to achieving this goal as these are the most popular versions of its OS with a market share of around 50.55%, compared to only 12.54% share of the market being captured by Windows 8 and 8.1 jointly.
If the demand for Windows 8 machines will go up the software developers will be much more inclined towards writing Windows 8 software and attract new buyers. The company has declared January 19, 2018 as the deadline for ending its support to Windows 8 and 8.1. Speculations are that by 2015 the company will make available its new version of Windows, which is rumored to be known as Windows 9 and code named ‘Threshold’ by the company.
