Yes, the PC sales decline is slowing. No, that doesn't mean Windows 10 is about to explode.

The good folks at Gartner are at it again, confidently predicting that Windows 10 will start to see widespread adoption in enterprises of all kinds. Really. Any time now.

From windowslatest:

Gartner has released their prediction report for Worldwide device shipments where they are expecting a overall drop of 0.3% in devices sold in 2017 worldwide. They have mentioned in their report that device buyers are nowadays prioritizing Quality and Functionality and are not looking at price alone. Consumers are more keen on buying premium quality products which may be more costly as compared to other cheaper alternatives which are compromising in quality.

Gartner have reiterated the the fact that PC shipments are on pace to drop and will be 3 percent in 2017. But they have also said that decline in shipments is slowing since the rate of decline is slower this year when compared to past few years. One or the reason for this is the fact that Windows 10 new devices are being considered by the enterprises.

Okay, a couple of things here:

1. PC sales are still declining. They are not increasing, or rebounding, they're dropping again, for yet another consecutive year. 
2. There is no obvious link that I can see between declining PC sales, and increasing Windows 10 adoption rates. Since Gartner aren't providing actual data to back up this ridiculous assertion, I have to wonder if it's not more a matter of wishful thinking than of thoughtful analysis.
3. The rate of decline in PC sales has slowed because the sales of gaming PCs is up by 25% year-over-year. Workstation sales are even worse than the overall rates would indicate.

Gartner have been doing this for a while now, confidently predicting an imminent explosion in Windows 10's adoption, even as actual adoption rates, and all other related indicators, remain stagnant. The perennial message seems to be, "wait for next year." Sure, given enough years, eventually Windows 10 will catch, and even surpass, Windows 7's usage share, but there's nothing yet to indicate that next year will be that year as opposed to, say, 2020.

Part of that is ongoing concerns with Microsoft's respect for the data and privacy of users, but the cost of new PCs isn't the only cost involved in migrating to a new OS. There's also every other piece of software that a business might be using to do business, and it might not all play well with a new environment.

From TechTarget:

Two years since its release, Windows 10 still isn't close to catching up to Windows 7 in terms of enterprise adoption.

The most common reason many organizations are holding off on Windows 10 enterprise adoption is because they rely on legacy applications that still don't support the operating system. Other organizations resist migration because what they currently have still works.

[...]

"Investment in legacy applications is typically a roadblock, and we are certainly seeing a lot of that," said Doug Grosfield, president and CEO of Five Nines IT Solutions, a consultancy in Kitchener, Ont.

This is part of the problem faced by any new version of Windows; there are always device driver issues, and other software incompatibility issues, and it always takes a while for workarounds to be found for them. This is partly why savvy users never switch in the first year of a new Windows version, and part of why most would wait for a Service Pack before taking the plunge. But Microsoft seems to be going out of their way to break the chain with the huge library of older Windows software, preferring instead that every Windows 10 user buy all their software again through Microsoft's storefront, and it shows in these persistent software compatibility problems.

Microsoft is deliberately undermining the single greatest feature of Windows, namely that everybody has run Windows for decades, and has a huge library of software that they can use as a result. But that's not necessarily true anymore for Windows 10, and slow Win10 adoption is a predictable result.

The fact that Microsoft has also gone out of their way to undermine the trust and goodwill that their customers used to have for them probably isn't helping, either.

Windows 10 will, eventually, take over from Windows 7 as the default version of the OS that everybody uses. But that shift is not going to happen anytime soon - definitely not this year, and probably not next year. The reality is that Windows 7 still works, and will continue receiving security updates until 2020, which means that even businesses don't actually need to start migrating until 2019; they only need to be finished by 2020. Gartner's desire to make it happen earlier, as they're obviously advising their clients to do, isn't actually going to make the shift happen sooner than that.