When is Windows 12 coming out? Intel seems to know the answer, as Dave Zinsner, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Intel, had mentioned during the Citi 2023 Global Technology Conference last month that a “Windows Refresh” is coming as early as 2024 next year. While Zinsner doesn’t actually namedrop “Windows 12” anywhere during his talk, some publications have pointed out that Windows Refresh happens to be the term that Microsoft used to describe Windows 11 before it was officially announced in 2021. Windows 10 currently enjoys a desktop market share of nearly 72% percent worldwide, while Windows 11 lags behind with 23.61%, according to the latest statistics from Statcounter.
We’ve gotten, I think, much more focused in terms of providing value to customers, getting a stronger engagement with the customer base. I think that’s also helped a lot in terms of rectifying things. I think at this point, based on where we sit on share, we feel pretty good. I mean, we feel like we’ve really righted the ships on the client side of the business and now it’s a matter of just continuing to execute on the products, continue to bringing them out with new processes.
And I think that business will largely be defined on how the market grows. We actually think ’24 is going to be a pretty good year for client, in particular, because of the Windows refresh. And we still think that the installed base is pretty old and does require a refresh and we think next year maybe the start of that, given the Windows catalyst. So we’re optimistic about how things will play out beginning in ’24.
