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The cost of keeping a four-year old PC could be as much as US$2,736 per device, which is enough to replace the hardware with up to two PCs.
That's according to research from Techaisle - commissioned by Microsoft and Intel - which surveyed a total of 2,156 small and medium businesses (SMB) across Asia Pacific.
Findings uncovered that a PC older than four years old is also 2.7 times more likely to undergo repairs, resulting in a loss of productivity.
Furthermore, 85 per cent of larger SMBs, with more than 500 employees, have PCs that are older than four years, compared to 60 per cent in smaller SMBs employing less than 100 employees.
"PCs are the productive engines for most SMBs in the region, where organisations rely heavily on their devices for their day-to-day tasks," said Bradley Hopkinson, vice president, consumer and devices sales of Asia at Microsoft.
"However, seven in 10 SMBs surveyed have PCs that are older than four years, which significantly increases maintenance costs.
"With budget constraints being the number one IT challenge among SMBs today, business leaders should seek to adopt a device modernisation strategy so that they can maintain costs, while safeguarding their organisation from newer digital risks."
When it comes to data breaches, the study revealed that in the last year 67 per cent of SMBs may have experienced PC security and data theft breaches, with only 15 per cent of them reporting the attacks.
"SMBs constitute 98 per cent of enterprises in the Asia Pacific region, and employ half of the workforce in the region yet many of them still have PCs older than four years old," added Santhosh Viswanathan, managing director, sales and marketing group across Asia Pacific and Japan at Intel.
According to Microsoft, who has just announced new Surface products, the top IT priorities among SMBs included investing in PCs, cloud solutions and security solutions, without specifying in which order.
The study also highlighted that SMBs are looking at IT as a response to address their business issues.
Respondents in the study identified their top business priorities as increasing profitability, business growth and improving workforce productivity.
It has also been revealed through the study that 69 per cent of those who have upgraded to new devices felt that they were better able to secure and protect their business data on newer PCs.
