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For those not Gartner clients, buying a specific MQ can be expensive.

But paying clients can always seem to end up Best in Class even if the class consists of precisely themselves and carefully selected (and obviously inferior) products.

I've always felt that, like Alice's Restaurant, you can get anything you want at Gartner's Restaurant. (excepting Alice). It will have circles and arrows and color glossy charts. But I won't find any of it convincing.

I have grown suspicious of any company that advertises a Gartner award, immediately skeptical of any Gartner study, and completely discount anything they publish to bolster one trend or product over another. Maybe it's just me, but I've been bitten too many times by studies, ratings, and products carrying Gartner awards.

Just did. No blushing.

Then I went to the corner coffee shop. Nineteen Macs, two Dell notebooks, one huge whomping HP running Vista. The Point of Sale system they use is Linux running something on KDE.

Really, you need to get out.

Suggesting someone 'needs to get out' to prove your point shows you fail to understand the concept of anecdotal evidence. What's do you suppose is happening with the other 90%+ of other PCs being sold?

I work in IT for a K-12 School District as well, under much the same conditions. What we have found is that standardization is the key to getting a handle on cost. We had to sell this however, and did so through the use of an analysis of the cost of standardization versus the cost of non-standardization. To do this, you must be able to explain the total cost of ownership over the lifespan of the computer. Often times what seems like a great bargain ends up costing far more in the end, because people take the internal cost for maintenance for granted and don't include it in the overall cost of the computing resource.

Total Cost of Ownership

A 2008 study by the Gartner Group determined that a $1,200 dollar PC could have a 4-year TCO as high as $5,867 per year. However properly locking down and managing the computer could cut that by as much as 42% or $3,413.

Rick Kaestner of the Consortium of School Networking (CoSN) has a wonderful presentation about TCO as well as a great tool to help determine what your TCO is. I would suggest running several current case scenarios and a best case scenario for comparison.

While cookie cutters work in the school lunch room, it has been my experience that many school districts fail to draw a distinction between the needs of instructional and business portions of operations. There is really no "one size fits all" solutions. The single platform approach tends to fail in the face of specialized requirements so it is important from a cost-effectiveness standpoint to analyze these areas and group their requirements accordingly, then focus standardized environments that meet the needs of these groups.

The Importance of Partnerships

Districts are also somewhat myopic in how they construct purchasing agreements, often confusing the terms price and value. Inexpensive doesn't always mean valuable. As an example, one district I worked for determined that it wanted to lower the initial aquisition costs, and to that end produced and evaluated an RFP containing evaluation criteria focused primarily on initial cost. After awarding the contract and receiving the first batch of computers, the district became rapidly aware that they had an issue when 50% or more of the machines were dead-on-arrival, requiring additional time and expense to return. This affected the value over time portion of the TCO of this equipment and after much consernation, the district was forced at additional cost to rebid the equipment, modify the evaluation criteria and waste implementation time overturning the original decision.

The lack of insight with initial aquisition costs led the district in the long run to changes its way of thinking and to embrace longer-term contracts, but even more importantly it became aware of the advantages of long term partnerships. Long term partnerships bring some intangible items into the equation such as the availability of higher end resources such as access to engineers, as well as assistance with integration and other things that are important to business. On the instructional side, many of the larger computer companies maintain divisions who specialize in working with K-12 environments. The bottom line is that it is important to get a handle on the big picture and to make as many people as possible aware of the current picture and give them of a vision of how things could improve. School districts tend to pay attention when someone says "I can save us money, get better service and have data to prove it."

Android outsold iOS worldwide by 2:1 in Q4 2011, which was a record quarter for Apple with the iPhone 4S launch.
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1924314

iOS, however, now sells more than Symbian for the first quarter in history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_operating_system#Market_share

Yes, if you stretch the definition of PC to include phones and tablets, then yes, you may be able to claim Apple is the #1 PC seller.

However, if you limit it to actual desktops and laptops, they aren't even in the top 5 worldwide according to Gartner (although they're #3 in the US).

For that matter, who is Canalys? I've heard of Gartner (hence why I linked to them) because they're the industry standard in PC sales metrics.

With 15 million iPads sold last quarter, the tablet market is now larger than the entire desktop PC market.

LOL. Then I guess the Christmas season must have been Apple's slow quarter, because Q1 2011 PC shipments were 85 million.

I disagree. Here's why.

"Although I seriously doubt Symantec's 5 million number is right,...." I could see it. According to Gartner, "smartphone sales to end users reached 115 million units in the third quarter of 2011. The Android OS accounted for 52.5 percent of smartphone sales to end users in the third quarter of 2011 more than doubling its market share from the third quarter of 2010." Add in the Android phones sold prior to third quarter 2011 that are still in use.
Now we are talking about an under 10% successful infection. That doesn't grab headlines. Of course, an anti-virus vendor who happens to sell "end point protection" at $29 a year for their Pro version may have a financial incentive to make sure they are in news.

Phones are appliances, and trying to handle malware the same way we handle it on computers (which is to say, after the fact) is not going to work.

Smartphones are not appliances. Quit thinking of them as such. They are small, portable computers that meet most of the end user's needs. Hence the popularity. As their primary function is to make a phone call, perhaps the GUI does not fit into our typical "this is a computer" mindset. In the same way, VoIP phones and networks have been a target for years. For example, the Cisco 7940 has webserver built in. Again, a small computer.

Google needs to keep their market open. There's not the barriers to entry Apple has erected. I'll give you they do need to co-operate with the authorities.The key here is educating the user base. This in terms of tools (anti-virus software) as well as habits (don't go here on the web).

Links:

• Cisco Voip hacking from 2006 (?)
  http://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-usa-06/BH-US-06-Endler.pdf
  Gartner
  http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1848514

And as I live in the U.S., land of the free, the following disclaimer applies: The above material is presented strictly for educational purposes

Even more interestingly, going on last quarters Mac and PC unit sales, Apple has 18% of the worldwide market share. (Apple results/Gartner worldwide PC shipments).

What.

4Q11, Apple - 11% U.S., somewhere with "Others" worldwide.

Count for yourself, 352,806,984 total shipped last year and you mentioned 17,000,000 Macs sold yourself.

Right here, pure gold: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1400813

Read that 5 times, carefully, and then get your bosses to do the same. Seriously.

SAS70 is a *questionnaire* that the vendor completes, and then the auditors just go in and confirm that their answers are correct.

So I could say "we don't do backups" in my answer to the questionnaire, the auditors would verify that I didn't do backups, and I'd "complete" the SAS70 process (not a certification!) successfully.

It is the client that is resoponsible for reviewing the questionnaire and ensuring that the audited answers are sufficient for the needs of their business. That's called "vendor management" and is a core practice area in ITIL.

N800, bitchez!

(Seriously, why does everyone think Android is/was the only competitor to Apple?)

They're probably looking at U.S. smartphone market share; Symbian is way down at the bottom and Maemo/Meego/whatever isn't listed. In world smartphone market share, Symbian is slightly ahead of iOS but is well behind err, umm, Android.

Whatever happens this year, I'm sure iPhone users will grab the popcorn and enjoy the show.

Why? Samsung is selling more smartphones than Apple right now[1], so if they are going to fork Android to, say, Samsungoid, the new number one will be Samsungoid. And the number two could very likely be Vanilla Android...
I'm sorry for your Apple shares, but the iPhone, iPod prime time is past. Well, I don't know if you own Apple shares (so I'm sorry if I'm mistaken), but you are always so readily vocal against Google (harsh first post here, harsh first post yesterday with the Korea investigation story...) and so in love with iPhones that you look like you own a lot of them.
[1] Gartner report for the third quarter 2011

The world is bigger then the US:

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1764714

and Apple is tiny compared to Nokia. They almost a match to the Symbian phones though.

And in my household it's 50/50, which is just as relevant as looking at a Nielson telephone survey of the US market. Worldwide the picture is slightly different for the smartphone/dumphone market: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1848514

Smartphones will outpace dumbphones in a matter of time. Interesting to see that Nokia accounts for 23.9% of the total market with Apple at 3.9% in 3Q of 2011.

They are. They make the most profits and are single most successful vendor.

Apple may make the most profits, but they're no longer the single most successful vendor -- Samsung overtook Apple in the most recent quarter sales figures from Gartner. (And it wasn't even close -- 24 million units to 17 million units).

(This may be partly due to the delayed release of the 4S, though -- we'll see what Q4 looks like. But that's a big difference to turn around even with the increased 4S sales ...)

Incidentally, how well are Macs selling these days? Has Apple gained marketshare @ the expense of PCs?

In the US, Apple's marketshare went down to something like 1.5% at it's lowest. Mac has 12.9% now according to the latest Gartner study.

Elsewhere in the world, Apple's marketshare is lower, and Gartner only publicly publishes the top 5, so one would have to look elsewhere to get a estimate on how that's been growing.

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1

What the...? How is it losing ground? Apple is the #1 smartphone vendor and had its highest sales ever with the iPhone 4, even in spite of the phony antenna controversy. In fact, with the iPad and iPod touch counted, iOS is the #1 mobile OS by a large margin.

I believe Android has it beat. Apple may be gaining traction but it's not number one. A quote from BusinessWeek July 29:

Apple increased its market share to 5.6 percent in the second quarter, from 2.6 percent a year earlier, IDC said in an e-mailed statement today. Nokia, Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc., the three biggest vendors, all lost market share, making Apple the only one of the top-four to post a gain,

Your data comes from here, which I don't find to be particularly reliable. Just read through several of his pieces with charts with no data and stupid reasoning that "the numbers are too imprecise to provide data." Yeah, whatever bub. Keep "analyzing" business to provide charts that support your predefined position that Apple is dominating Android even while Android holds 45% of the market and climbing.

Except that at the OS level Android has eclipsed iOS with 2x the marketshare in 1Q11

Only if you exclude iPad and iPod Touch with that report excludes.

Except for the fact that they are the market leader. Name *ONE* mobile company doing better than Apple right now.

They've only sued over things they believe they own, and the courts have agreed with them. They aren't trying to stop HTC or Samsung from making their own products, but they *are* trying to stop them from making products that are too much a clone of Apple's products.

There are plenty of ways to make a multitouch phone and multitouch tablet. Apple chose their style. It's up to everyone else to choose their own as well.

Except that at the OS level Android has eclipsed iOS with 2x the marketshare in 1Q11.

As for phone manufacturers: Nokia (25%), Samsung (16%), and LG (5.6%) are all ahead of Apple (3.9%) in market share.

As for styling, there's only so much you can do with a rectangular design with rounded corners.

Good catch, the page I saw referenced this: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1762614. So reading that, the figures are estimates for end of 2011 not current values. It also has OSX at 4.5% and Linux at "below 2 percent." Desktops, laptops, and notebooks were included. Phones, tablets, and the like were excluded.

if you count tablets iOS is still on top

Are you sure about this? According to this there will be about 90 million iOS devices sold in 2011, and about 180 million Androids. Even if we assume those numbers are strictly for phones, that leaves a gap of 90 million devices.

According to this, Apple's selling fewer than 30 million iPads per year. And that doesn't even account for any of the popular Android tablets out there, such as the Xoom, the Eee Transformer, and the Nook Color.

Yes, iOS rules in tablet space. But it does not bridge the gap in phone space.

Sure many of them are because not everybody can afford an Apple product. And quite a few of them have better hardware that Apple's. Some are made in the same factory with the same sweatshop labor as Apple's. [foxconn] The fact remains that Android smartphone marketshare is almost triple what the iOS is worldwide and growing at a much faster rate than iOS. Back when Android was a fraction of Apple's marketshare Dear Leader Steve told his followers that there is no way that Android is going catch Apple in smartphone marketshare. 2 years later and we have this
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1622614

How many Android phone were sold to people who wanted an iPhone but couldn't get one? How many Android phones are sold by wireless companies that want to sell iPhones but can't? How many Android phones are built by manufacturers that want to build an Apple product but can't?

It is Apple versus the world. Android is their weapon of choice. But nothing is beating the iPhone. It just so happens that every competitor has the same OS. To say that that OS is made by Google so Google is beating Apple is like coloring an apple orange and pretending to compare oranges.

I can't answer those questions and you can't either. You have provided no proof that manufacturers want to build iOS devices. No proof whatsoever. You can split hairs all you want that does not detract from the fact that when it comes to OS marketshare Android is way ahead of iOS in smartphone OS marketshare.

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1622614
I know... Facts are a bitch when they don't fit your world view.

They may be the oldest, but their market share for handsets has slipped down to the low single digits (this mirrors the picture in their network infrastructure business, which is now owned by NSN after being spun off as a separate business last year, but all the IPR stayed with the handset division). Yes, they do have a patent "war chest", but the investment in it has shrunk considerably over the last decade at least, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually a "war jewellery box". There might be a few gems in there, but most of the killer patents will have expired or are soon to expire so their negotiating position might be somewhat weak.

But the above statement strikes me as rather pathetic trolling - in the history of new computing devices, has there ever been a wealth of software sat there waiting for its release day ready to install on it?

If they'd allowed Windows Phone 7 to run Windows Mobile 6 applications (and both of them are based on Windows CE) they would have had a wealth of software. If they'd allowed people with C/C++ legacy code to run it on WP7 they'd have had people who have iPhone/Android portable applications supporting them.

The fatal flaw in WP7 is that they've told those people they need to either rewrite everything in C# or pay Microsoft for a permit to use native code. Most developers aren't going to do either of those for a platform with the market share of WM6 (~10%). Actually WP7 looks like it will have even less market share that that.

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1689814

Microsoft's total market share has dropped from 6.8% in 1Q10 to 3.3% in 1Q11. Of that only 1.6% is WP7, the rest is WM6. Right now you can write in C/C++ and target Android and iPhone. Rewriting in C# or paying for native code is just not going to happen to get 1.6% of the market. In fact all the companies that make software I use on WM6 have dropped WM6 and announced they won't support WP7 but will move to Android and/or iPhone.

At that point it's hard to see the people who've bought WM6 in the past are going to move to WP7 instead of Android.

Look at it this way. Imagine if Vista had been launched with no support for XP applications at a point where OSX had a much larger market share. All the people that made software on XP have already ported to OSX and announced they'd drop support for XP and not support Vista. Basically it would have been game over for Microsoft on the desktop. That's what they've done on phones.

What's funny is that I remember loads of excited articles on how Vista's crappiness would cause a move to Linux. That was never going to happen. On the other hand I can see WP7 causing all the WM6 users moving to Android.

Android right now is literally a better Windows Mobile than WP7.

It's actually amazing that a company obsessed with back compatibility and cosseting developers like Microsoft has done something so dumb.

It's a bit of an odd situation really. Windows CE aka Windows Mobile had a lot of applications people use - I like Pleco and Opera for example. Not to mention all the bespoke stuff - e.g. delivery drivers often have Windows CE or Windows Mobile Devices.

Now Windows Phone 7 won't actually run any Win32/Arm applications - only C#/Silverlight or XNA ones. Also it's too dumbed down for most Windows Mobile users I suspect. Right now Windows sold 3.6 million smartphones in 1Q11. Unfortunately 2 million of those were Windows Mobile and only 1.6 million were Windows Phone 7. In the same time frame 36 million Android devices were sold, 27 million Symbian and 16 million iPhones. Even RIM sold 13 million.

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1689814

Windows Mobile used to have 6.8% of the market in 1Q10. Now the combined share of Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7 is only 3.6%. And of that Windows Phone 7 is only 1.6%. A huge number of people seem to have moved to Android - it's share has gone from 9.6% to 36%.

In a sense Microsoft have done what a lot of people on Slashdot have been suggesting for ages - drop back compatibility and do something radically new. And frankly it's a disaster. People with Windows Mobile are buying the few remaining Windows Mobile handsets - notably the excellent HD2 instead of the Windows Phone 7 ones. Or switching to Android. Not a lot of people are switching from Android or iPhone to Windows Phone 7. In fact the two competitor OSs are completely different. Android is very open but a bit of a mess like WinMo. iPhone is very closed but slick. The open one - Android - is growing really fast.

I personally got an HD2 rather than an HD7. I can flash custom Roms and it runs the old applications.

It's very unlikely that Pleco or Opera will ever run on Windows Phone 7. Pleco has ported to iPhone and is porting to Android - they have a system to run the same core code on both but have different UI layers. Opera Mobile runs on Android. The iPhone only has Opera Mini. But in general iPhone has lots of software - it's easily the most profitable platform to develop for.

If things stay the way they are my next phone will be Android - most of the applications I like will work there by the time I upgrade my HD2 and I can get an HTC handset which is not at all locked down.

So Microsoft have a problem - the ISVs have all decided that rewriting their C/C++ code which runs on Windows Mobile, desktop Windows, iPhone and Android in C# to run purely on Windows Phone 7 is not a viable idea. In fact I suspect even if they allowed native C internals but required a C# UI layer (Android is like this I think - the UI needs to be in Java but the core can be in native C) - it's by no means certain ISVs will support the platform if it sells less than Windows Mobile and looks like it will sink. Opera stopped doing Windows Mobile builds when Windows Phone 7's lack of back compatibility was announced. Similarly Pleco have claimed that the iPhone version of the software was outselling Windows Mobile version ten to one - their Windows Mobile version is still available but it will not be updated and they won't do a Windows Phone 7 port.

Now Windows 8 will run on both ARM and x86. It also runs the old Win32 applications - unlike Windows Phone 7. It's not like desktop ISVs will rush to port their ancient Win32/x86 applications to ARM. I'm very sceptical that any ARM chip will be fast enough to emulate x86 code as fast as a lowly Atom chip can run it natively.

So Windows on ARM at the moment is in desperate need of software. The stuff that used to run on Windows Mobile has the advantage of being designed to run on low CPU power devices too.

So just maybe Windows 8 on ARM will be the platform for people who want old applications to work will end up on. I predict Windows Phone 7 will sink just like Zune and Kin. It would be a shame if Microsoft completely killed off their Win32/ARM ISVs in the process. But to be hon

Aw hell, if you can't beat them, join them:

Hotmail is one of the first "cloud" applications ever. Microsoft's experience with "cloud computing" is therefore top-notch! I'm sure HTTPS being shut off had more to do with ongoing enhancements to the Azure platform than anything else. Even Gartner Group agrees that Azure marks Microsoft's beginning of their inevitable cloudscape dominance.

It's possible that Microsoft is working on a replacement for HTTPS, and that the Azure platform is being rolled out in these despotic nations as a humanitarian gesture. Microsoft's committment to Open Source Software and top-notch development tools really overcomes any possible negative press or stock valuation that might arise from this minor mishap.

The battle is on for the third tier phone OS. iOS and Android are the top two, everything else is an "also ran". This includes Palm's offering, Meego, Symbian, and WP7

Actually, in the world Symbian is the first smartphone OS by market share (37.6%), Android the second (22.7%), Blackberry the third (16.0%) and iOS the fourth (15.7%). Microsoft is currently a distant fifth with a 4,2% market share, and that includes both Windows Mobile and WP7.
(source).

um, NO. Android outsells it in SMARTphones. Include dumbphones and Nokia is way, way ahead.

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1372013

I won't call your post bullshit, merely uninformed. You might try that with someone else next time so you don't appear to be such an ass.

The iPhone is quickly losing market share to android devices. In November of 2010, over 40% of global smart phone sales were android based devices, as opposed to 26% which were iOS based devices.

Where do you get them numbers?

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1466313 says:

Table 2
Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 3Q10

Symbian 36.6%
Android 25.5%
iOS 16.7%
RIM 14.8%
Windows 2.8%
Linux 2.1%
Other 1.5%

cool so you like gartner, lets use a more recent posting from them then. Would you like salt with that crow?

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1466313

It is both. http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1466313

number of switches in a brain = number switches per neuron * number neurons=1000*2E11 = 2.0E14
number of switches in computers = mean number switches per computer * number computers=2.5E8*1E9=2.5E17
estimates from here and here

VMs are a building block of a cloud computing environment. Definitions vary, but you can read Gartner's definition of Cloud, for example.

- Service interfaces
- Scalable and elastic
- Shared
- Metered by use
- Delivered over the Internet

So a VM is necessary but not sufficient; a VM is what you get when you virtualize an underlying resource pool. If you virtualize a pool of hardware, you get an elastic pool of shared compute resources; but there still needs to be more coordination to supply an API, metering, etc.

Beyond IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), there are additional cloud tiers - Platform as a Service (Google Apps for example), and Software as a Service (salesforce.com, or Google Apps for your Domain).

Most commentators like this CNN reporter immediately position WinPhone7 in competition with the iPhone, but just maybe it's RIM who's really the initial target. Consider the enormous investment large corporations have in a Blackberry infrastructure that co-exists with their Exchange servers. Having Outlook on a cell phone with a secure connection to Exchange makes RIM rather superfluous.

There were 10 million Blackberries sold in the first quarter of 2010 according to Gartner. Devices running the iPhone and Android OS accounted for about thirteen million. If I were running Microsoft, I'd start by leveraging my existing clients and targeting those RIM devices. Switching a single large enterprise from Blackberries to WinPhones brings a lot of business Microsoft's way in a hurry.

First quarter year-on-year growth was 40% for RIM compared to -0.9% for Windows Mobile and 117% for iPhones. Sales of Android devices grew a whopping 800% but did not overtake the iPhone in total. Most of those phones were being sold to consumers, of course. Denting that market would be nice for Microsoft but not as lucrative as converting corporate Blackberry accounts.

O rly? This says things a bit differently

If you look at table two it says "Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 2Q10 ". You will notice that iOS says "14.2%" for world share, and Android says "17.2%" for world share. Last I checked 17.2 > 14.2 ... ;)

And just to provide real numbers to the discussion:

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1372013

Symbian, RIM, iPhone, Android, Windows in order of platform.

Go ahead and mod me down, but it's only a matter of time before this happens again. You either accept the liability and put your trust in microsoft for patches, or do something else. It's not a stretch to expect more of the same.

"At the same time, the company said it would not patch Windows because doing so would cripple existing applications."
http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/applications/3236953/microsoft-confirms-unpatched-vulnerabilities-in-key-enterprise-programs/

"The security firms also notified Microsoft of two other unpatched bugs that the Stuxnet worm exploited"..."Microsoft said last week. It has not set a timetable for the fixes, however."
http://www.techworld.com.au/article/361843/microsoft_confirms_it_missed_stuxnet_print_spooler_zero-day

"was first identified by information security researchers in June"
http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=207166&ref=g_homelink

IN THE QUARTER. In the quarter. It's the biggest platform IN THE QUARTER.

Rather than admonishing other people to read your links, please read the story that you're talking about. They haven't caught up to anyone yet, they're just selling faster.

Ignore the 851% figure because it's meaningless. If I sell 1 phone in my first quarter and TEN phones in my second quarter, that's a growth of 1000% per quarter! All it tells us is that Android didn't have much market penetration before and it's up now.

In the end, this isn't news. There are MANY manufacturers using Android as a platform and only Apple using iOS as a platform. Apple is tied to the most hated major network in America, and Android isn't. The actual question is 'what took them so dang long?'

While, just glancing at the math, your statement may seem to be true, the simple fact is, it is not quite that simple. While Android only had 9% of the market share in Q1 2010, they had as much marketshare as Symbian, Palm and Linux phones combined. On top of that, NPD claims that Android phones outsold iPhones in Q1 2010 as well.

BUT the statistics are different elsewhere. Gartner says there were 8.36 million iPhones sold in Q1, while there were 5.21 million Android phones sold in Q1. So, even taking that more conservative estimate, it means Android phones were doing very well in Q1 - and simply, even better now.

It does make the 800+% growth figure though seem absurd - unless it's over Q2 2009.

Last quarter, for example, Macintosh sales were ~30% higher than the year before

24.7% in the US according to Gartner; the world-wide stats weren't in the top 6, so I can't see them without buying Gartner's research paper.

However, in the same time period, the entire market across all vendors increased by 16%.

and half of those were to new customers.

[Citation needed]

1, 2, 3. According to the Q2 2010 statistics, Apple is 4th place in the US with 9.8% of the market. Ahead of them are (3rd) Acer with 11.3%, (2nd) Dell with 23.7%, and (1st) HP with 25.7%.

Apple doesn't even make the top 6 world-wide; number 6 has 5.1%, so it's less than that.

6.

"The consumer PC market registered double-digit shipment growth, but consumer mobile shipment growth slowed. This was due in part to slower growth of mini-notebooks," Ms. Kitagawa said. "Surging popularity of Apple's iPad temporarily cannibalized mini-notebooks, as well as consumer notebook sales to some degree. It is not certain at this stage if the cannibalization will continue with the current price point of media tablets."

-- Gartner, talking about the US computer market

What does this mean? It means that (in the US market), the iPad has stolen some of the mini-notebook (AKA Netbook) growth, but it is still a growing market segment.

Source: Gartner Says Worldwide PC Shipments Increased 21 Percent in Second Quarter of 2010

Quite right. Here's the Worldwide stats.

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1372013

Er, no! Symbian only has a 2% market share and falling.

The link you give refers to some form of US only survey. They don't make it clear, other than using the word "National" rather than "International".

The article is talking about the UK, and last time I looked that is not one of the US states.

Worldwide, Symbian is still the market leader, with 44.3% of the market. The nearest competitor is RIM with 19.4%.
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1372013

do not know, however it has been a god send to our project. http://blogs.gartner.com/ray_valdes/2009/05/31/the-secret-sauce-behind-google-wave/

Indeed...

Gartner, 2001: "Gartner predicts that, by 2006, IPF-based servers will have a 20 percent share of the overall server market by revenue"

Gartner, 2001: '...for Windows Data Center Server and Enterprise Server, the question is not "Will it be [Itanium]?", but "When?"'

Microsoft, 2010: "Windows Server 2008 R2 to Phase Out Itanium"

Indeed...

Gartner, 2001: "Gartner predicts that, by 2006, IPF-based servers will have a 20 percent share of the overall server market by revenue"

Gartner, 2001: '...for Windows Data Center Server and Enterprise Server, the question is not "Will it be [Itanium]?", but "When?"'

Microsoft, 2010: "Windows Server 2008 R2 to Phase Out Itanium"

Android phones now outsell iPhone OS phones

That really depends who you ask. The NPD report put Android's market share higher than Apple's at the end of Q1 (sorry, no link handy), but Gartner says Apple outsold Android by 6% in Q1 2010 and by 11% in Q4 2009. Android didn't even sell enough to get its own line in Q3 2009, but they mention in the text a few paragraphs after the table that Android had 3.5% of Q3's sales. If Apple outsold Android the last three quarters, I have a hard time believing that Android's market share was higher than Apple's at the end of Q1. Yes, Android's sales are growing, but if you believe Gartner then mathematically Android's market share is still quite a bit smaller than Apple's. That's not guesswork, it's just math (again, if you believe Gartner).

The problem with these statistics is that they all use different methodology. I don't know how Gartner gets their numbers, but NPD does online surveys and extrapolates based on that (and they don't include corporate or enterprise users). I'm not saying NPD is doing it wrong, I'm just saying that all these "market share" statistics come with a giant asterisk.

Android phones now outsell iPhone OS phones

That really depends who you ask. The NPD report put Android's market share higher than Apple's at the end of Q1 (sorry, no link handy), but Gartner says Apple outsold Android by 6% in Q1 2010 and by 11% in Q4 2009. Android didn't even sell enough to get its own line in Q3 2009, but they mention in the text a few paragraphs after the table that Android had 3.5% of Q3's sales. If Apple outsold Android the last three quarters, I have a hard time believing that Android's market share was higher than Apple's at the end of Q1. Yes, Android's sales are growing, but if you believe Gartner then mathematically Android's market share is still quite a bit smaller than Apple's. That's not guesswork, it's just math (again, if you believe Gartner).

The problem with these statistics is that they all use different methodology. I don't know how Gartner gets their numbers, but NPD does online surveys and extrapolates based on that (and they don't include corporate or enterprise users). I'm not saying NPD is doing it wrong, I'm just saying that all these "market share" statistics come with a giant asterisk.

Android phones now outsell iPhone OS phones

That really depends who you ask. The NPD report put Android's market share higher than Apple's at the end of Q1 (sorry, no link handy), but Gartner says Apple outsold Android by 6% in Q1 2010 and by 11% in Q4 2009. Android didn't even sell enough to get its own line in Q3 2009, but they mention in the text a few paragraphs after the table that Android had 3.5% of Q3's sales. If Apple outsold Android the last three quarters, I have a hard time believing that Android's market share was higher than Apple's at the end of Q1. Yes, Android's sales are growing, but if you believe Gartner then mathematically Android's market share is still quite a bit smaller than Apple's. That's not guesswork, it's just math (again, if you believe Gartner).

The problem with these statistics is that they all use different methodology. I don't know how Gartner gets their numbers, but NPD does online surveys and extrapolates based on that (and they don't include corporate or enterprise users). I'm not saying NPD is doing it wrong, I'm just saying that all these "market share" statistics come with a giant asterisk.

"The flurry of construction activity is different than the overbuilding during the dot-com boom"

thats what they all say.

what about when the next fad comes along and facebook is forgotten over night?

Maybe. But it could be true as well, if you kind of believe in Gartner's hype curve. I do, because, I have seen many things going through that phase of disillusion and pick up again when time comes. Maybe dot com is going to become part of steady growth.

my 2 cents.