{"id":194,"date":"2026-11-03T08:30:15","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T07:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mspbusiness.com\/en\/?p=194"},"modified":"2026-11-03T08:30:26","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T07:30:26","slug":"a-year-after-the-end-of-windows-10-support-where-things-stand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mspbusiness.com\/en\/technology-and-architecture\/a-year-after-the-end-of-windows-10-support-where-things-stand\/","title":{"rendered":"A year after the end of Windows 10 support \u2013 where things stand"},"content":{"rendered":"

On 14 October 2025 Microsoft ended mainstream support for Windows 10, and on 13 October 2026 the first year of Extended Security Updates for business customers expired. A year on, Windows 10 still accounts for more than a fifth of desktop web traffic in the Netherlands and almost 28 per cent worldwide. In business environments, according to Lansweeper, it runs on one in six Windows devices, and on more than one in five among SMEs. Those devices carry an average of 1,903 open CVEs, compared with 652 on Windows 11. The second ESU year costs \u20ac130 per device, double the first year, and year three doubles again. At the same time, the average PC price is rising by more than 18 per cent this year because of the memory shortage, so delaying replacement also costs money on the hardware side. For a client with 100 workstations and a realistic remainder of 25 Windows 10 PCs, two years of delay adds up to more than \u20ac14,000 extra, on top of a replacement that is coming regardless. This article sets out the figures and calculates what an MSP should honestly tell clients about the cost of waiting.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this article: <\/strong>How much Windows 10 is still out there?<\/a> | Where it is getting stuck<\/a> | What ESU costs in year two<\/a> | The bill that isn’t on the invoice<\/a> | What to do with the devices that can’t upgrade<\/a> | Worked example for a client with 100 workstations<\/a><\/p>\n

A year ago, the market expected the end of support to trigger a major migration wave. That did happen \u2013 to a degree. In September 2025, executives at Dell and HP were still reporting that around half of all PCs ran Windows 10, and in June 2025 Windows 10 stood at 44 per cent in the Netherlands, according to Statcounter. Since then that share has almost halved. But the tail is long, and that tail sits precisely with the clients who create the most work for an MSP.<\/p>\n

How much Windows 10 is still out there?<\/h3>\n\n\n
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Figure 1. Windows 10’s share of desktop web traffic in the Netherlands and worldwide, June 2025 to September 2026. Source: Statcounter via ICTMagazine.nl and Dutch IT Channel.<\/em><\/p>\n

Statcounter measures web traffic and does not distinguish between consumers and businesses, so the figures say something about usage and nothing about the number of installed devices. With that in mind: in September 2026, 21.1 per cent of Dutch Windows desktop traffic came from Windows 10, against 27.8 per cent worldwide. The Netherlands is therefore ahead of the average, but behind Belgium, where the share was already around 20 per cent in the summer. The summer stall is striking: between May and June the Dutch share actually rose slightly, from 23.4 to 24.9 per cent. Part of the explanation lies with consumers, who in the EEA receive free security updates until October 2027 as long as they use a Microsoft account, and who therefore felt no reason whatsoever to migrate.<\/p>\n

For business environments, Lansweeper’s inventory data is more useful, because it counts devices rather than traffic. In mid-2026, 78.8 per cent of business Windows clients in that dataset ran Windows 11 and 16.9 per cent Windows 10. A further 1.8 per cent ran Windows 7 (!), 8.1 and XP, meaning that in total 18.7 per cent of devices no longer receive security updates. A year earlier, Windows 10’s share was around 50 per cent, and immediately after the support deadline it was still in the low forties. The decline is therefore substantial, and yet a year on, one in six business devices still runs a system for which Microsoft no longer releases patches without ESU.<\/p>\n

Where it is getting stuck<\/h3>\n

The breakdown by sector and company size explains why MSPs feel the impact more than the average figures suggest. Among SMEs, 21.4 per cent of devices are still on Windows 10, compared with 16.6 per cent at large organisations. By sector, healthcare leads with 23 per cent, followed by consumer and retail at 22.7 per cent and manufacturing at 18 per cent. Technology, telecoms and logistics sit at around 11 per cent. The explanation is always the same: wherever a PC is attached to a device, a till, a production line or a lab instrument, the supplier of that equipment sets the pace, and that supplier often has no Windows 11 certification or charges heavily for it.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Figure 2. Windows 10’s share of business Windows devices by sector and organisation size, mid-2026. Source: Lansweeper.<\/em><\/p>\n

The hardware argument, meanwhile, has all but disappeared. According to Lansweeper, only 2.8 per cent of business Windows 10 devices fail to meet the requirements for Windows 11, with peaks in retail (7.8 per cent) and transport and logistics (6.1 per cent). The remaining 97 per cent can technically upgrade without issue. This means the remainder consists mainly of devices for which nobody has put the project on the agenda, applications that have not been tested, and clients who keep postponing the investment. Then there is ESU behaviour: in mid-2026, according to Lansweeper, only around 14 per cent of Windows 10 devices had actually received the ESU patches. The rest had therefore been running for months without security updates, ESU or not.<\/p>

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An RMM dashboard showing 85 per cent Windows 11 conceals the fact that the remaining 15 per cent is probably sitting in the most vulnerable places: the PC in the treatment room, the till system, the workstation next to the machine. And these are the devices clients most often say \u2018aren’t connected to the internet anyway\u2019 \u2013 which, amusingly, they very often are.<\/p>\n

What ESU costs in year two<\/h3>\n

Microsoft fixed the business ESU prices when it made the announcement, and the market has had a year to factor them in. Year one cost $61 per device, rounded to \u20ac65 excluding VAT in Europe. Year two, which runs until 12 October 2027, costs $122 or \u20ac130. Year three, until 10 October 2028, costs $244 or \u20ac260. The years must be bought in sequence: a client that skipped year one and now signs up after all pays for years one and two together, \u20ac195, and anyone who skips year two cannot go straight to year three. Over the full three years, that comes to around \u20ac455 per device for security updates alone, with no new features and no support for the rest of the stack.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Figure 3. Cumulative cost of business Extended Security Updates per device, excluding VAT, when signing up in year one. Source: Microsoft via ITdaily and TechTimes.<\/em><\/p>\n

There are exceptions that matter for MSPs. Anyone managing Windows 10 devices via Intune or Windows Autopatch received a 25 per cent discount on year one under the original announcement; that discount carries over into subsequent years. Windows 10 running in a Windows 365 Cloud PC or Azure Virtual Desktop receives ESU at no extra cost. And the LTSC editions of Windows 10 have their own lifecycle: IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 is supported until 2032, which is often the best solution for tills and industrial PCs. These exceptions do not apply to the ordinary office workstation, and that is where the price tag rises sharply.<\/p>\n

The consumer side works differently and causes confusion among SME clients. Consumers in the EEA receive free ESU until 12 October 2027, the only condition being a Microsoft account that has been signed into within the past six months. A small business owner who has seen that notification at home expects the same at the office. That does not work for devices in a domain or under Entra ID, nor for Enterprise editions. The MSP needs to explain this difference before the client sees the quote for year two.<\/p>\n

The bill that isn’t on the invoice<\/h3>\n

The ESU invoice is what is immediately visible. The larger costs lie in what is not invoiced. Lansweeper counted 1,903 open CVEs on an average Windows 10 device, against 652 on Windows 11 \u2013 almost three times as many; two thirds of these are rated high or critical and 2.4 per cent are being actively exploited. These figures apply to devices on which the ESU patches have<\/em> been applied, because ESU only covers critical and important vulnerabilities in the operating system and does nothing about outdated drivers, Office versions and applications that are themselves winding down support on Windows 10. Microsoft 365 Apps will continue to receive security updates on Windows 10 until October 2028, but no new features, and Copilot functionality will not come to it.<\/p>\n

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Worked example for a client with 100 workstations<\/h3>\n

Waiting two years costs more than \u20ac14,000 extra<\/h3>\n

Take an SME client with 100 workstations, 25 of which \u2013 in line with the Lansweeper average for SMEs \u2013 still run Windows 10. All 25 can technically move to Windows 11, but the client wants to postpone replacement until 2028.<\/p>\n

ESU years two and three: 25 \u00d7 (130 + 260) = \u20ac9,750, excluding VAT, for security updates alone.<\/p>\n

Hardware: at a replacement price of \u20ac1,000 per PC and a price rise of 18 per cent, the same replacement in 2028 comes to \u20ac29,500 instead of \u20ac25,000, a difference of \u20ac4,500, assuming prices do not rise further after that.<\/p>\n

Total: more than \u20ac14,000 in additional costs for two years of delay, without counting the extra management hours, the higher insurance premium and the risk of an incident. The replacement itself will come eventually regardless.<\/p>\n

An alternative clients are often willing to hear: replace the 25 PCs in stages over the next twelve months, put the three most critical devices on ESU for year two and migrate the rest now. That costs \u20ac390 in ESU plus the regular replacement, and results in an environment with a single operating system.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Then there is the insurer. Since last year, cyber insurers have been asking explicitly about unsupported operating systems in their questionnaires, and the consequences range from a higher premium to an exclusion or a rejected claim if an incident enters via a Windows 10 device. An MSP that lets a client with twenty Windows 10 PCs carry on working is thereby taking on a liability risk that is not included in the ESU fee. On top of that comes the Cyberbeveiligingswet, the Dutch law implementing NIS2, for clients that fall under it: an unsupported system is permitted, provided the risk is documented and kept limited. Documenting this is a job for the MSP.<\/p>\n

The third hidden cost is management. Two operating systems in one client environment means two patch rings, two baseline configurations, two sets of exceptions in the security tooling and two test tracks for every application update. An engineer who has to keep treating three Windows 10 devices separately for a single client costs more than the \u20ac390 in ESU those devices generate in year two. An MSP that resells ESU as a service without passing on those management costs is funding the client’s delay out of its own margin.<\/p>\n

And finally, hardware. IDC expects the average PC selling price to rise by 18.3 per cent in 2026, because DRAM and SSDs, according to Omdia, now make up almost 40 per cent of a PC’s bill of materials, against 15 per cent in normal years. Shipments fell by more than 20 per cent in the third quarter. A client that postponed replacement last year to save money is buying the same PC at a higher price this year, and IDC expects the pressure on memory to continue well into 2027. Delay therefore shifts the purchase into a more expensive market.<\/p>

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What to do with the devices that can’t upgrade<\/h3>\n

For the barely 3 per cent of devices that technically cannot move to Windows 11, and for devices tied to a machine or instrument, there are four routes an MSP must weigh up case by case. The first is ESU, as a temporary bridge with a hard end date and a price that doubles every year. The second is an LTSC edition, if the supplier of the connected equipment supports it; that is often the clean solution for tills, lab systems and production PCs that never needed a feature update anyway. The third is isolation: the device in its own network segment without internet access, with the documentation the insurer and the regulator want to see. The fourth is virtualisation, where the legacy application runs in a Windows 365 Cloud PC or a virtual desktop and the physical device becomes a thin client, or a Linux installation for devices that only need a browser.<\/p>\n

The mistake MSPs make in practice is applying these four routes to the entire Windows 10 remainder. The 97 per cent that can simply migrate belongs in a migration project with a date, and the case for that lies in the figures: every month of delay costs ESU money, management time, insurance cover and a more expensive PC at the end.<\/p>\n

Sources <\/strong>(links open in a new tab): Statcounter, Desktop Windows Version Market Share Netherlands (September 2026)<\/a>; Statcounter, Windows Version Market Share Worldwide (September 2026)<\/a>; ICTMagazine.nl, Nederland houdt langer vast aan Windows 10 dan Belgi\u00eb (28 July 2026)<\/a>; ICTMagazine.nl, Windows 11 haalt Windows 10 wereldwijd in (4 July 2025)<\/a>; Dutch IT Channel, Marktaandeel Windows 11 stijgt door verdubbeling ESU-kosten Windows 10 (7 October 2026)<\/a>; Lansweeper, Windows 10 holdouts carry three times the risk of Windows 11 (14 July 2026)<\/a>; Help Net Security, The Windows 10 hangover is becoming a security problem (20 July 2026)<\/a>; TechTimes, Windows 10 Commercial Security Updates Expired, Leaving Enterprise PCs Exposed (15 October 2026)<\/a>; ITdaily, Another year of Windows 10: are extended updates still worth the cost? (14 October 2026)<\/a>; Microsoft, Windows 10 support has ended on October 14, 2025<\/a>; TechnologyInsider, Wereldwijde pc-leveringen dalen ruim 20 procent door AI (11 October 2026, Omdia and IDC)<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A year after Windows 10 support ended, one in six business devices still runs it. Delay is costing MSPs and their clients thousands of euros extra.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mspb_bron_id":1169531,"mspb_url_nl":"https:\/\/mspbusiness.com\/technologie-en-architectuur\/een-jaar-na-einde-support-windows-10-de-stand-van-zaken\/","mspb_url_de":"https:\/\/mspbusiness.com\/de\/technologie-und-architektur\/ein-jahr-nach-dem-support-ende-von-windows-10-eine-bestandsaufnahme\/","mspb_url_en":"","mspb_beeld_url":"https:\/\/mspbusiness.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/nieuwseditor-hero-491.jpeg","mspb_beeld_klein":"https:\/\/mspbusiness.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/nieuwseditor-hero-491-400x225.jpeg","mspb_auteur":"Marcel Debets","mspb_beeld_alt":"","mspb_video":"","_yoast_wpseo_metadesc":"A year after support ended, Windows 10 still runs at many Dutch businesses, with rising ESU costs and growing security risks.","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"layout":[7],"class_list":["post-194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology-and-architecture","layout-in-depth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mspbusiness.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mspbusiness.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mspbusiness.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mspbusiness.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mspbusiness.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mspbusiness.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":195,"href":"https:\/\/mspbusiness.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions\/195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mspbusiness.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mspbusiness.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mspbusiness.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194"},{"taxonomy":"layout","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mspbusiness.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/layout?post=194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}