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I forgot to add a link to Net Applications. Here is it: http://marketshare.hitslink.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx?qprid=5

BTW Vista has a larger OS market share than linux + apple combined

And it'll never have more market share than it has today, so let's have a look, shall we? 24.35% according to hitslink for May (The June numbers are "under review" reportedly because they contain unexpected data). That's not a lot to peak at for a Windows OS. It's better than ME, but nowhere near XP.

As a "moron" who reads summaries *and* even TFA's, and who even looks further into some things (gasp), I noticed that NetApp's Market Share page for Operating Systems has the same lack of data so far for this month as does the browser page.

Maybe this is just a case of "Nothing to see here, move along..." until we find out they had some mundane reason they were tardy this month.

This report's data is currently under review. It will become available as soon as possible.

[http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8]

All reports are reviewed at the beginning of each month to ensure the following:

• No data collection errors occurred
• There are no major inexplicable statistical variations

All reports that have not been reviewed are prominently labeled with a warning. If any part of a report's data falls outside the reviewed timeframe, a warning is also displayed.

[http://marketshare.hitslink.com/status.aspx]

This report's data is currently under review. It will become available as soon as possible.

[http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8]

All reports are reviewed at the beginning of each month to ensure the following:

• No data collection errors occurred
• There are no major inexplicable statistical variations

All reports that have not been reviewed are prominently labeled with a warning. If any part of a report's data falls outside the reviewed timeframe, a warning is also displayed.

[http://marketshare.hitslink.com/status.aspx]

Opera mini isn't a web browser; it's a java-based image viewer displaying pre-rendered content from opera's caching proxies. It's designed for phones that can't handle a real web browser. Are you sure you want video with that?

If you look at actual mobile web usage, iPhone/iPod touch is at 64%. Nobody else comes close, though Android (also webkit) will likely see an increased presence in the future.

No, it's more like 65.5% http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0

If the browser wars exist only in dwindling niche markets, why does MS continue to improve Internet Explorer?

And if Firefox is losing the war, and "few understand" it, why are they continuing to creep upwards in market share? Why are there a number of Firefox derivatives? Why are the other browsers continuing to play catchup? (tabbed browsing, addons, etc)

Linux may lack the marketing that both Microsoft and Apple have, but the word is spreading.

To hear the geek tell the tale, he has converted everyone within leash - within reach. But when you look at the charts - the trend line remains as flat as his Dad's putting green. Top Operating Systems Share Trends

Maybe MSFT can copy Linux and make it a live distro so people can try it out before full install... wait, that'll never make them bite. Nevermind.

It may not be a "live distro," but Win 7 has already captured about half the desktop share of Linux. Operating System Market Share

Net Applications is mass-market oriented. If your gadget can access the web, Net Applications will track it.

W3Schools is developer-oriented. But even there Win 7 has 1/4 the share of Linux. OS Platform Statistics

It took Linux six damn years to move from 2% to 4% in the W3Schools stats.

Win 7 gets a 1% share in five months.

It's interesting, but at this point can Microsoft really convince anyone that they are serious about putting out a quality product?

Microsoft is strongly positioned as a client OS. On the server. In core business applications. In development tools. In console gaming....

In software software sales, MS Office is bigger than games.

Bigger than anything. It is the tail that wags the dog. The 900 pound gorilla. Choose whatever metaphor you like.

The Win 7 Beta opened to rock-solid reviews and has effortlessly claimed about half the market share of Linux on the desktop. Operating System Market Share

The geek knows all of this intellectually, but he can't process it emotionally. It is easier to live within the bubble.

I can remember articles talking about Windows Firewall in the past as being pretty darn good too, yet it seems the first thing a tech person does is to deactivate these days.

Windows Firewall wasn't designed for the techie.

It was designed for the user relentlessly nagged by requests to approve outbound access for the obscure subroutines of programs that already have his permission to access the net.
 

XP 62%
Vista 24%
OSX 8%
W2K 1%
Linux 0.99%
Win7 0.42%

Operating System Market Share [May}

So about 1 in 4 in the consumer market have migrated to Vista - I'd say almost certainly to a new mid-line laptop or desktop.

It will be a tad embarrassing for the geek if Win7 overtakes Linux before its RTM in October.

"an application of computer hardware" is a completely unidiomatic expression; no eductated native speaker would use it. Even if it wasn't, you should learn that certain words used in a specific technical context have a meaning different from their common meaning as used by laymen like yourself.

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/A/application.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_applications
compare with
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system

http://www.yourdictionary.com/application

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/51745

Do you see word, excel and powerpoint on here? http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8

What does 'arse' has to do with ANYTHING I have said?

One, you claimed that because a word exists, it means you're free to invent meanings for it. When (or if) you grow up you'll lear that it's called "giving a counter example".

Two, everything you said and ever will say is shit, because you're the worst kind of thick bastard - the kind who doesn't realise it.

So on the evidence, it's you that can't speak English, you arrogant little pillock.

Excellent points. Also there's the fact that software doesn't age. It might look dated, but the 1s and 0s on a new XP CD are just as useful as the original ones. Cars fall apart with use and age. They have a limited lifetime, even if you don't use them they will eventually oxidize and fall apart. Software is good until there doesn't exist any hardware left that is capable to run it. It doesn't matter how old the OS is, what is the determining factor is the number of people still using it, which is something about 60% usage share for XP. You absolutely right that MS weren't a monopoly, then Microsoft would be in no position to cut off supply of XP or they'd be left with the 24% usage share that Vista currently enjoys because everyone else would buy an alternative OS.

Excellent points. Also there's the fact that software doesn't age. It might look dated, but the 1s and 0s on a new XP CD are just as useful as the original ones. Cars fall apart with use and age. They have a limited lifetime, even if you don't use them they will eventually oxidize and fall apart. Software is good until there doesn't exist any hardware left that is capable to run it. It doesn't matter how old the OS is, what is the determining factor is the number of people still using it, which is something about 60% usage share for XP. You absolutely right that MS weren't a monopoly, then Microsoft would be in no position to cut off supply of XP or they'd be left with the 24% usage share that Vista currently enjoys because everyone else would buy an alternative OS.

Some of us, for various reasons, are pretty much stuck with using IE6 for browsing /. and are faced with a pile of mis-rendered & incompatible pages

Browsing from work I guess, there cannot be many /. readers who don't have at least one alternative browser on their private machine ;-)

We appreciate having /. optimized for FireFox, but would also like such consideration for the more-used IE6 browser.

No longer more used. According to http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2, Firefox 3.0 overtook IE6 in February of this year.

This article in no way says, "Teh Interwebs as we know it are ovur!".

Don't know about TFA as I don't read crap. But TF summary certainly does say that.

Also, w3schools are a skewed demography. A reality check is here:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=2

Yes, it seems like Jobs wants to have his name on stuff for the cool factor. 'Look what I did.' Even when he didn't do all that much.

Okaaayyy.... all those who were founding partners of a computer company that has captured 10% usage share, please raise their hands. Those people are allowed to make snarky comments about how little Steve Jobs knows. Everyone else, STFU. Unless you have worked with the man personally or have a reasonable assurance that he acts this way, what you've asserted is completely unfounded. The same goes for Ballmer and Gates (even though Ballmer didn't get in until 1980).

"Familiar - Windows is easy to use and familiar so you can be up and running right away" - with 94% market share (Mac at 5% and Linux at 1%) it is reasonable to assume that most people are familiar with the Windows environment.

I realize that exact figures don't really change your argument much but market share figures are something that have long been slippery. The more appropriate figures, in my opinion, put Windows at about 88%, Mac at 9.7 and Linux around 1%.

Market share properly refers to the number of computers sold during a given period of time, which is not necessarily a good indication of the number of computers actually in use, which is called "installed base." One reason is that the time period given may or may not be representative. For example, the Mac had almost 20% market share in the month immediately following the introduction of the original iMac in 1997. That was short lived and didn't really affect the installed base that much. Another reason is, Mac advocates contend, that Mac users keep their Macs longer than Windows users keep their PCs. Therefore, the Mac's market share translates to a higher installed base. In the case of Linux, it's really hard to tell because many copies of Linux are not sold at all. They're just downloaded and installed on as many machines as the user wants.

Market share is often cited because it's something that's easy to measure. Another method that's relatively easy to measure is the percent of web surfing observed. This can be biased because of different uses for different kinds of computers and different software configurations. For example, the inclusion of RSS feeds turned on by default in recent versions of OS X gives Apple an unfair advantage because it constantly generates multiple hits to popular sites which the user is not actually going to. On the other hand, pervasive spyware may give Windows an unfair advantage for similar reasons. Linux is underrepresented in terms of these kinds of unintended surfing. Internet share also doesn't do a very good job counting the share of Linux in the server and embedded markets since these machines aren't really used that much for web surfing. Web surfing figures are often, wrongly, published as "market share," as in this article. Nevertheless, it is interesting to look at the figures.

You're right that is was slower before I turned all that stuff off, but before I did that, it was slow to the point of being unusable -- now, it's just sort of slow. Case in point: why is it that it takes a second or two to load up all the icons on the control panel on Vista 64 bit on a core duo 2 at 3.24 GHz with 4 GB of ram? Are you really trying to tell me that an OS that takes a second to load 20 or so icons on brand new hardware is fast? Really???

One could make the argument that by refusing to acknowledge what nearly every average user can tell after using Vista for a few days, i.e., that it's sub-par, you expert windows users could be dooming yourselves to mediocre software for the foreseeable future because MS will never learn its lesson and write better software. My only complaint is that I have to use it with you when necessary. But then again, MS seems to have realized that users are reluctant to buy slow software and are trying to speed things up with Windows 7 so maybe there's hope yet. This is not a troll, this is a fact, MS is losing usage share and has been doing so ever since Vista was released. This should be telling you something, and it's not just marketing or a bad rap: most people really aren't all that happy with Vista.

Really? Seems like at least 25% of computer users know how to install another browser.

Note that this demographic includes Firefox, Opera, Chrome, and pretty much all non-IE and non-Safari browsers.

It could be that most of their Safari visitors are using the beta, while most of their Firefox visitors are using a release version.

So FutureMark is telling us that the number of Safari 4 users who have explicitly downloaded the beta upgrade, significantly outnumber the Safari 3 users who got it bundled, managed, and updated with their Operating System?

If this was IE vs. another browser, I could see that being the case. But since we're talking about a beta revision of the same browser, I find that statement highly suspect.

There is a significant Bellwether for the future in the tech industry - find out what the Nerds are recommending!

The geek told me to buy into the Linux netbook.

The Linux netbook has gone the way of the dodo, so what am I to make of that?

In the Net Application webstats, Linux, all flavors, has a 1% market share. MS Vista 24%. Win 7 0.38%.

1/3 of "everything Linux."

Usage Share Trend for 'Windows 7' [May 12]

The geek may argue the numbers. But it is going to sting if Win 7 overtakes Linux while it is still an RC.

It could happen as early as the Fourth of July.

The Net Applications webstats are essentially mass market. That makes them all the more intriguing and all the more damning.

Almost everyone in this sector shops HP or Dell once every four or five years for the attractive OEM bundle and that is the end of it.

They don't upgrade hardware. They are never comfortable cracking open the hood to take a look inside.

No way in god's green earth are they ripping out Vista to install the Win 7 RC on their WalMart Pavilion.

No dual boot. No VM, either.

That means the upward push behind Win 7 has to be coming from the technical elite, the enthusiast, the geek.

There is simply no other realistic possibility.

That consists of

• Corporations with policies of only using IE.
• Non-technical individuals that have no desire to "upset" the voodoo magic that makes their computer connect to the intarnet.
• IE enthusiasts.
• People who use websites that only work in IE (like my employer's time card system brought to you by Mrs. Arnold's fifth grade class).

These people will always keep IE's share above some percentage (I'd take a stab of about 66.6%). Also, and I appreciate Asa's non-profit work but I must question his for-profit source that he cited. Where and how was this data collected? It's a very difficult problem and everyone of these browser-share or operating system-share reports that hits Slashdot are ripped apart by readers as being statistically flawed. No transparency causes me to instantly dismiss these findings.

Believe it or not,IE is non profit as well.Proof of that is, MS is giving it away with each copy of operating system it sells.
The financial math for them is as such:
1. "our newest operating systems are nowhere near good enough, for getting people to upgrade";
2."the ratio of new computers sold vs the installed base is lower than it was in the good old days, making backward compatibility even more important. that makes the old policy of " shifting the goalposts" unworkable";
3."Moore's law ain't what it used to be; for a user who browses the web, checks email, does something in Excel and Word, and uses a terminal emulator for data entry, the perceived value of changing the computer with a new one has no value, provided that the user interfaces remain the same; if the new computer has Vista or Win7, the perceived value is probably negative";
4. solution: if we seed the world with our IE, with its quirks, active-x controls and incompatibilities, and marry it forcefully with our operating systems, we'll be able to sell more copies of our operating system. IE does not run on any other platform, and the big installed base with IE6 as standard will do the marketing for us."

It seems this conversation might benefit from a link to the original source data:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=1

• Corporations with policies of only using IE.
• Non-technical individuals that have no desire to "upset" the voodoo magic that makes their computer connect to the intarnet.
• IE enthusiasts.
• People who use websites that only work in IE (like my employer's time card system brought to you by Mrs. Arnold's fifth grade class).

These people will always keep IE's share above some percentage (I'd take a stab of about 66.6%). Also, and I appreciate Asa's non-profit work but I must question his for-profit source that he cited. Where and how was this data collected? It's a very difficult problem and everyone of these browser-share or operating system-share reports that hits Slashdot are ripped apart by readers as being statistically flawed. No transparency causes me to instantly dismiss these findings.

I somehow suspect these numbers (1% Linux market penetration, and such) are for systems that are shipped with the OS pre-installed by the manufacturer.

If you'd read the article (I'm not new here), then you'd have seen that the 1% estimate comes from web browsing statistics from a large number of sites, which counts only currently installed operating systems on web-browsing PCs. Of course, the selected web sites are mostly USA-based and don't count Linux browsers disguised as Windows, but it doesn't discriminate between bought/installed OSs.

If you took reports from major websites (Google, ESPN, Yahoo, MSN, etc, etc), I think that would be the best metric for filling in any gaps. That would give you a percentage of an OS actually used.

Counting web hits is a very common technique. Here is a recent survey showing 2% market share for Linux, and here is one showing 1%. That shows that the technique is very crude -- uncertain by at least a factor of two. There are all kinds of reasons for that uncertainty. Many user agent strings are bogus, often because someone is trying to work around servers that lock you out unless you have a certain string. Every web site is going to have its own demographic. Unique users are notoriously hard to identify in server logs.

Why would Cook be 'sabotaging'? We're talking incompetence here, not malice.

It was implied in the post (which I'm sure was a troll).

Sorry - the downfall has already begun. RIM is again the biggest smartphone maker.

Blackberry smartphones are selling more than iPhones because RIM is catering to the enterprise which tends to place orders by thousands. Secondly, Blackberry has more models and is available across different carriers. Third, and most important - iPhone is more than just a smartphone. It's a platform with which Apple will try to branch out into different markets. Blackberry is a one-trick pony and doesn't have excellent prospects when it comes to things that don't fall within their core competency. The statistic you mentioned is the same kind of marketshare trap whereby Mac or Linux are being dismissed simply because those OSes are in single digits, often forgetting the fact that most PCs are just beige boxes inside offices that serve a single purpose. I'd like to think that 1 consumer PC which actually gets used for gaming, shopping and entertainment has more worth than 30 PCs which are locked down and offer very limited access to users (i.e. office machines)

Rather than compare monthly shipped units, a better metric is web usage. iPhone/iPod touch dominate this category.

What they really need is to get people to stop replacing it with an older version, and to stop trying to get the older one on their new hardware.

They tried that, and since Vista's a bloated, slow, buggy piece of shit, people went to Linux instead (the early Netbooks were like 100% Linux..). This scared the crap out of Microsoft, thus the selling Windows XP well after it's "past due" date.

Vista is approaching a 25% share of the market.

Top Operating System Share Trend

It's easy to imagine a 10% decline in XP's share and a 10% increase in Vista's share May-to-May.

Not THAT easy. People now "know" Windows 7 is out any time and so even LESS likely to get Vista IMHO. I'm not interested in Windows but do give M$ props for apparently massively speeding up Windows 7 (compared to Vista) and cutting the RAM appetite back to sane levels... making Vista even less appealing than it was.

The geek looks in the mirror and thinks that he is representative of the mass consumer market.

???

The HP desktop from WalMart is quad core and ships with 6 GB RAM and 64 Bit Vista. In six months - nine months, whatever - it will be an i7 with 9 GB RAM.

Serious horsepower at a mass market price. Mature 64 bit drivers. Win 7 just around the corner.

What's not to love?

What the hell are you smoking? It's POSSIBLE to buy boxes like this, but they are not the norm. 6-9GB of RAM? Come on. (As for mature 64-bit drivers I run Linux, so I had them for years, on Alpha, PA-RISC, and PowerPC before the 64-bit Intel/AMD chips even came out.)

Dual-core is Coming Soon to a netbook near you. It won't be long before XP stops making sense even at entry level.

XP already doesn't make sense at the entry level -- Microsoft doesn't even support it -- but neither does Vista. Recall that netbooks have to run off battery power -- just because dual cores are available doesn't mean it's desirable to choose an OS so bloated it needs dual cores just to run decently (i.e. again, Microosft's DOA until Windows 7 is out, at the minimum.)

The PS3 is accounted for. Rather than look at the trend, if you click on the April, 2009 link in the linked article, it breaks it down by device (the PS is at 0.05%):
Windows 87.90%
Mac 9.73%
Linux 1.02%
iPhone 0.55%
iPod Touch 0.15%
Java ME 0.07%
Android 0.07%
Symbian 0.06%
Windows Mobile 0.05%
Playstation 0.05%
BlackBerry 0.03%
FreeBSD 0.02%
Palm 0.02%
Nintendo Wii 0.01%
SunOS 0.01%
BREW 0.00%
OpenBSD 0.00%
OpenVMS 0.00%
HP-UX 0.00%
SCO 0.00%
SCP 0.00%
AIX 0.00%
NetBSD 0.00%
Web TV 0.00%
Nintendo DS 0.00%
Presumably, the "linux" here is linux desktops and laptops and not linux devices, nor unix (if you believe that).

Have they corrected for the fact that Linux users are more likely to be able to use a variety of ad blocking and filtering tools, and thus may not be showing up in their statistics?

How exactly do you think they should correct for that? Just give Linux more market share?

How many studies have come out that estimate the percentage of Linux users who mask their identity while browsing? It's been my experience that people using Linux want to advertise that fact wherever they can, including user agent strings. If they are solely depending on advertising for this then that's one issue (they would be measuring the usage share among users who view ads), but it would make a lot more sense to use a non-advertisting network, like they allude to in their "About Our Market Share Statistics" summary.

We collect data from the browsers of site visitors to our exclusive on-demand network of live stats customers. The data is compiled from approximately 160 million visitors per month. The information published is an aggregate of the data from this network of hosted website statistics.

That sounds like they have customers using their analytics software, and they collect information from them. They probably also collect information from their survey software. In fact, I don't see much of advertising services at all. One of the data points they collect is search engine referrals, they can't get that data if they only track requests that are made for ads. A request for an ad served up on a page does not include information about the search terms that were used to reach the parent page.

"I get very suspicious of any site that doesn't go into detail on their methodology for making a claim like this"

'We use a unique methodology for collecting this data. We collect data from the browsers of site visitors to our exclusive on-demand network of live stats customers...'

Browser Version Market Share

IE 7 44.5%
IE 6 17.5%
IE 8 4.3%
IE 5 0.04%
IE 5.5 0.03%

Firefox 3.0 20%
Firefox 2.0 1.8%
Firefox 3.1 0.18%
Firefox 1.5 0.15%
Firefox 1.0 0.06%
Firefox 3.5 0.01%

So call it 50% of the web for IE 7 and IE 8.

Net Applications tracks hits to e-commerce and other mass market websites.

It's not looking at techies. It's looking at guy who watches Fox News and does his shopping at K-Mart.

The geek lives in a bubble.

He believes what he wants to believe.

If there is so much interest for the RC then it seems that Windows 7 will be VERY successful!

Windows 7 can already claim a 0.21% share of the desktop or about 1/5 that of Linux, all flavors. Operating System Market Share

Just a tad embarrassing for the geek should the RC overtake Linux over the next thirteen months.

I would like to see an XP VM in all OEM consumer versions of 64 bit Win 7.

That kind of double whammy - have your cake and eat it too - in the home and SOHO markets would be very tough to beat.

Development models don't interest users. Programs interest users.

The Mac-app can have a distinctive identity.

iWorks. iEverything-Else.

The Linux app is The GIMP, "the next best thing" for the guy who can't afford Photoshop Elements or Paint Shop Pro and it has already been ported to Windows.

Windows is the software mega-mall and that counts for more than apt-get.

What they really need is to get people to stop replacing it with an older version, and to stop trying to get the older one on their new hardware.

Vista is approaching a 25% share of the market.

Top Operating System Share Trend

It's easy to imagine a 10% decline in XP's share and a 10% increase in Vista's share May-to-May.

The geek looks in the mirror and thinks that he is representative of the mass consumer market.

The HP desktop from WalMart is quad core and ships with 6 GB RAM and 64 Bit Vista. In six months - nine months, whatever - it will be an i7 with 9 GB RAM.

Serious horsepower at a mass market price. Mature 64 bit drivers. Win 7 just around the corner.

What's not to love?

Dual-core is Coming Soon to a netbook near you. It won't be long before XP stops making sense even at entry level.
 

Point of reference: Apple Q2 sales of Macs fell 3% as opposed to MS' 6%, but ipods and iphones were still growing, giving the company a net profit. Couple this to the data over the last year or so showing that usage share of windows operating systems has been eroding a 1-3% a year for the last four years, it appears that microsoft seems to be losing, but it's slow going. It could easily turn around with a new successful operating system by MS.

In the Net Applications webstats Win 7 has a 0.21% share of the global desktop. Linux - all flavors - 0.9%. Operating System Market Share

Does Ubuntu have 20% of the Linux desktop?

Net Applications provides services to clients who have no interest in counting licenses or the locked-down corporate desktop - only in hits to pages that reach their target mass-market audience.

The user for whom the OEM system install has been the gold standard for close on to thirty years.

That makes Win 7's showing in Beta all the more interesting.

I don't see the joke.

Vista's share of the desktop is 23 times that of Linux.

Windows 7 - which the geek persists in calling a "Service Pack" for Vista - has 1/5 of Linux's share of the web.

Operating System Market Share

Microsoft BOB is close on to fifteen years dead.

---and yet--and yet ---

The moment you begin moving in a virtual environment and interacting with a character instead of a dialog box you are back in BOB's world.

IE is "most browsers", if you want to think about it that way.

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0

"This [search] is the feces that is produced when shame eats too much stupidity."

Seriously, MS isn't about to make Yahoo! their default search over MSN. Yahoo isn't about to cede traffic over to MSN, even indirectly by lending their search backend to make MSN not suck as much. And along those lines, MSN is so terrible that 95% of people go out of their way ignore it even though it is the default in IE.

Initially modded up to +2, Informative.

Free is worth 1% of the desktop as viewed from the web. Operating System Market Share

Free wins two HP "Mobile Internet" netbooks a ride on the Walmart.com Linux merry-go-round.

Here today, gone tomorrow. Not available in stores.

Pricing is a wash.

$20 more or $20 less than the bog standard Windows netbook with a gig of RAM and a 160 GB HDD.

Not a clue to what distro is installed, what software is available, what peripherals are supported.

Don't forget to write.

This is symptomatic of a failure to listen to the user, to understand his needs and values.

Apple and Microsoft have been in this game for over thirty years and it shows.

They know that "free" doesn't convey a sense of value.

They know that the geek isn't their market.

The decision-makers in business, government, and the military are their market. Small business. The home.

It is their itches and pains that matter. Not yours.

that Canonical is doing what he's been trying to do for years.

What would that be, bring Linux to a <1% market share? I'd say Canonical is doing pretty much exactly the same as Red Hat. Back in its day RHL was pretty much *the* desktop distro (sorry, debian), building a name for themselves, getting certifications and so on. The only reason RHEL got anywhere is because half the geeks had already played with RHL. When they finally had enough legs to stand on in the business world alone, they dropped RHL and went with RHEL exclusive. Canonical definately wouldn't mind breaking into that known profitable market along with RHEL and SLES, and Ubuntu is the promotion package. If they carve out a market for Ubuntu LTS and drop Ubuntu in favor of a Fedora "testbed", the likeness would be complete. I hope things will be different this time around, but there's been a few too many "Year of the Linux desktop" for me to be very convinced.

According to these guys, opera mini is the second most used mobile browser No idea if these are accurate stats, just what I found with a quick search.

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2# is more interesting, with versions you can see IE7 > FF3 > IE6 > Saf3.2.

Aug06 to Feb07 MSIE7 gained 30% of the market, how, via windows update.

I'd bet FF is the most installed browser, whilst IE is the most pre-/auto-installed operating system component for internet browsing.

The rest of the world where? I'm as pro-standards as anyone else, but I hate to break it to you that most of the world is still using IE.

So, because most of the world uses IE, the rest of the world apart from IE ALSO uses IE?

What the fuck?

The rest of the world where? I'm as pro-standards as anyone else, but I hate to break it to you that most of the world is still using IE.

Yes, standards-compliant browsers are gaining more support every year, but it doesn't change the fact that with such a huge market share MS is still setting the defacto standard. This is especially true in the corporate environment. The great majority of corporate intranets are still using IE as their supported/required browser, and there is still A LOT of legacy web applications out there that rely on technologies like ActiveX to function. All that being said I'm glad to see Microsoft is finally starting to get with the program with IE8. Whether or not businesses start following suit and update their sites to be standards compliant is another question entirely, but I would hope that would be the case.

You may want to keep up with the stats IE is fast becoming irrelevant for some segment of the Web and is down to 67% globally.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=0

First, to suggest that Firefox is "unproven" is a bit disingenuous. According to http://marketshare.hitslink.com/firefox-market-share.aspx?qprid=0&sample=28, Firefox's market share is now over 20% (compared with IE's 67%). That's far from a trivial number of users, and I'm sure there are plenty of bad guys out there taking aim at Firefox. But that's all flame war garbage and irrelevant to the current discussion.

The problem is that you have a governmental organization making a vague, unqualified statement that is completely unnecessary. The site's policy should state, "At this time, we only support IE version 6 and above." There is absolutely no justification for stating that, "Mozilla based, non-IE browsers pose a security risk." (What about non-Mozilla-based non-IE browsers?) The fact of the matter is that any piece of software that interfaces with untrusted servers (that includes ALL web browsers) is bound to pose a security risk. To suggest that IE does not propose a security risk (which is implied by the FAQ statement) is intentionally misleading. And THAT is the cause for the uproar.

From what I can see, they're stating that safari grew by 0.5% of the total marketshare each day for at least 4 days, which doesn't sound completely outrageous to me, though obviously it will fall slightly as the "just checking it out" factor goes away.

0.5% for 5 days == a two 2% increase, and net applications claims safari has had over 8% since some time in december 2008:

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=1

I personally think safari 4 is a massive improvement over safari 3, so some of the people trying it out will probably stick around. It'll be interesting to see where the marketshare is in another month or two.

I'm having a hard time understanding where the "10%" figure comes from too. The article links to a stats page which lists the stats for IE, Chrome and Firefox at 68.17, 1.16, 21.96 respectively (as reported in TFA). But, for Safari, the article says 10.91%, but the stats page says 7.42% -- that's a big difference! Can anybody find where this 10% figure comes from (my personal guess is outta steve jobs' ass)

corrected.