Microsoft’s sales of Windows 7 and 8.1 licenses to OEMs has ended

2 min. read

Published onNovember 1, 2016

published onNovember 1, 2016

Share this article

Read our disclosure page to find out how can you help Windows Report sustain the editorial teamRead more

Just a few months after Microsoft celebrated the first anniversary of its latest operating system with theWindows 10 Anniversary Update, the company has finally stopped selling Windows 7 Professional and Windows 8.1 licenses to PC OEMs as of yesterday, October 31 (viaVentureBeat). While some retailers may still have stock of these old machines, Windows 10 has now become the only way to go for PC manufacturers.

As a reminder, Microsoft already stopped selling Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 licenses to consumers back in October 2013 and September 2015, respectively:

For consumers, this doesn’t change much as Windows 10 has been adopted pretty quickly by most PC OEMs since its initial release in July 2015. Actually, PC OEMs had good incentives to do so as old versions of Windows have limited support when running on newer processors and chipsets from Intel, AMD, NVidia and more. For the most part, PC OEMs seem to be happy with the versatility of Windows 10, with Dell sharing earlier this year thatWindows 10 2-in-1 devices were the future of computing.

If you’re still running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 on your PC though, you should be aware that mainstream support for the former already ended in on January 13, 2015. Now in Extended Support, Windows 7 is only receiving security updates and will continue to do so until January 14, 2020. For Windows 8.1 users, Mainstream support will end on January 9, 2018.

According toMicrosoft, there are already 400 million devices running Windows 10 in 192 countries across the world. As PC sales have been decreasing over the last few years, the company couldn’t have achieved this momentum without its year-long free upgrade offer to Windows 10 for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 PCs. However, the company did acknowledge earlier this year that it wouldn’t meet its ambitious goal to have1 billion devices running Windows 10 by 2018.

Radu Tyrsina

Radu Tyrsina has been a Windows fan ever since he got his first PC, a Pentium III (a monster at that time).

For most of the kids of his age, the Internet was an amazing way to play and communicate with others, but he was deeply impressed by the flow of information and how easily you can find anything on the web.

Prior to founding Windows Report, this particular curiosity about digital content enabled him to grow a number of sites that helped hundreds of millions reach faster the answer they’re looking for.

User forum

0 messages

Sort by:LatestOldestMost Votes

Comment*

Name*

Email*

Commenting as.Not you?

Save information for future comments

Comment

Radu Tyrsina

With KB5043178 to Release Preview Channel, Microsoft advises Windows 11 users to plug in when the battery is low#

Copilot in Outlook will generate personalized themes for you to customize the app#

Microsoft will raise the price of its 365 Suite to include AI capabilities#

Death Stranding Director’s Cut is now Xbox X|S at a huge discount#

Outlook will let users create custom account icons so they can tell their accounts apart easier#

Microsoft’s sales of Windows 7 and 8.1 licenses to OEMs has ended#

With KB5043178 to Release Preview Channel, Microsoft advises Windows 11 users to plug in when the battery is low

Copilot in Outlook will generate personalized themes for you to customize the app

Microsoft will raise the price of its 365 Suite to include AI capabilities

Death Stranding Director’s Cut is now Xbox X|S at a huge discount

Outlook will let users create custom account icons so they can tell their accounts apart easier

Microsoft’s sales of Windows 7 and 8.1 licenses to OEMs has ended