Industry research firm Gartner says that by the end of 2011 Windows 7 will become the most common operating system, running on some 42 percent of all PCs.

Microsoft has had trouble convincing PC users to switch to their latest OS. Statistics released in July by Net Applications showed that Windows XP was still the OS of choice for 49.69% of users.

Gartner believes that the increased usage share of Windows 7 has to do with enterprise adoption. Annette Jump, research director at Gartner, said in a press release that “Steady improvements in IT budgets in 2010 and 2011 are helping to accelerate the deployment of Windows 7 in enterprise markets in the U.S. and Asia/Pacific, where Windows 7 migrations started in large volume from 4Q10. By the end of 2011, nearly 635 million new PCs worldwide are expected to be shipped with Windows 7. Many enterprises have been planning their deployment of Windows 7 for the last 12 to 18 months, and are now moving rapidly to Windows 7.”

Gartner’s forecast shows that Chrome OS, Android or webOS will make any meaningful inroads into the PC market within the next year. However, the research firm estimates that in 2012 50 percent of the applications for enterprise will be OS-agnostic.

As of June of this year Windows 7 was powering 21 percent of all corporate desktops, with the decade-old Windows XP at 60 percent.