As you must know, Windows 7 will finally reach the end of its support lifecycle one year from now, on January 14, 2020. Yes, Microsoft will offer expensive paid support past that date for the biggest businesses. But Windows 7 usage is fairly ubiquitous with individuals and smaller businesses that will never even be offered additional support. So the theory here is that Windows 7’s exit will result in a massive wave of upgrades, with customers of all kinds buying new Windows 10 PCs.

That could happen. But it’s far more likely that the ensuing upgrade “wave” will be quite small, and much smaller than previous upgrade waves. It’s even alarmingly possible that Windows 7’s exit will have little to no positive impact on the PC market at all.