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MS Vista has twice the market share of OSX.

MX Vista has sixteen times that the market share of Linux.Top Operating System Share Trend

It interests me that when talking about Windows the Geek does not separate the kernel from the UI. The NT kernel of XP and Vista is fifteen years old. The LInux kernel seventeen.

The Mac's UNIX roots can be traced back to the NeXT system of 1985.

The problem is that the Moz Foundation began with a massive infusion of cash and has $70 million or so in new money coming in each year.

Moz is a full time professionally staffed organization with broad resources.

The problem is that funding and technical support from Big Daddy Warbucks - Google, Sun, IBM - all the usual suspects - is the exception. Sourceforge is the rule.

The problem is that as a client OS Linux has a 0.8% market share. Operating System Market Share I hope you can forgive me for saying so, but that isn't much to show for seven years hard work.

Vista should have a 20% share in the Net Applications stats before year's end.

Given the weakness in the world economy, that is a number Microsoft can live with. God knows its returns are looking better than Sun's, with profits down 73% last quarter, and no good news in prospect.
The Mac appears to be stagnating, and its reputation as the "high priced spread" may be to blame.

But that just takes you back to the same old question.

If the problem isn't with the UI and isn't with the installer and isn't with the apps why isn't Linux on the desktop gaining any traction?

However, M$ has a monopoly and Apple doesn't.

MS doesn't have a monopoly.
MS has several monopolies or near monopolies.
Most notably, they have roughly 90% of the generic x86 OS market and around 70% of the http-browser market.
(My source was http://marketshare.hitslink.com/, can't vouch for it's correctness)

On the other hand, Apple has at least one monopoly. They have very close to 100% of the OS X compatible hardware market, and use every trick they know in order to keep that monopoly.

The desktop base for Windows is approaching 70% for XP and 20% for Vista.
OSX 8% 2% for W2K.

Top Operating System Share Trend

You can muck about with these trend lines , but mostly what happens is that OSX grows a little bit faster and Vista a little bit slower.

Install Silverlight

Compatible Operating Systems and Browsers

Windows Vista
IE7, Firefox 1.5+
Windows XP SP2
IE7, IE6, Firefox 1.5+
OSX 10,4.8
Firefox 1.5+, Safari

Minimum Hardware Requirements

Windows
X86 or X64 500 MHz CPU, 128 MB RAM
PowerPC
Mac G4 800 MHz, 128MB RAM
MacIntel
Core Duo 1.83 GHz, 128 MB RAM

Top Operating System Share Trend

August 07 - June 08

Windows Vista 16%
Up 10%

The MacIntel 5%.
Up 2%

The Mac 3%
Unchanged.

Linux 0.8%.
Up 0.3%

In these stats, adoption of Vista appears to be accelerating and the Mac stagnating as we head into late summer.
MacIntel is where the action is for OSX and the MacIntel has BootCamp.
Desktop Linux draws flies.

Top Operating System Share Trend

Windows 91% - All Versions
Down 2%
The Mac and the MacIntel 8%
Up 2%

Apple sells an upscale urban life-style. Microsoft solid middle class value.
Apple has the boutique in Manhattan. Microsoft the big-box retailer in every township populous enough to rate a single traffic light.

Long term and with the economy in recession, who do you think holds the stronger cards?

Top Operating System Share Trend

August 07 - June 08

Windows Vista 16%
Up 10%

The MacIntel 5%.
Up 2%

The Mac 3%
Unchanged.

Linux 0.8%.
Up 0.3%

In these stats, adoption of Vista appears to be accelerating and the Mac stagnating as we head into late summer.
MacIntel is where the action is for OSX and the MacIntel has BootCamp.
Desktop Linux draws flies.

Top Operating System Share Trend

Windows 91% - All Versions
Down 2%
The Mac and the MacIntel 8%
Up 2%

Apple sells an upscale urban life-style. Microsoft solid middle class value.
Apple has the boutique in Manhattan. Microsoft the big-box retailer in every township populous enough to rate a single traffic light.

Long term and with the economy in recession, who do you think holds the stronger cards?

It's easy to imagine the geek choking on the thought that 15% of your users are running Vista. Which tracks closely with the webstats from Net Applications.

I am curious how this plays out long-term:

Do your customers stick with their original OEM cards or on-board video until they replace or upgrade their systems as a whole? How often do they upgrade?
Do they - as households - keep an oddball mix of older and newer hardware online?

The Slashdot geek lives in an echo chamber.

In the Net Applications stats:

Vista has grown from a 6% share in August 07 to a 16% share in June 08.
OSX from 6% to 8%
Linux from 0.5% to 0.8%.

Overall, Windows is down about 2% and OSX up about 2%.
But Windows still has 90% of the market and Vista seems to be doing quite well in direct competition against the Mac.

Well, looking at market share, even though Linux is still under 1%, it's almost doubled it's share in a year.

So even though the year of the Linux Desktop is a bit away, the time is coming closer.

With Google having 78% marketshare, I doubt it'll work out.

The OEM Linspire PC could be found at Walmart.

Linspire carried the torch for OEM Linux - Linux as a direct competitor to Windows in the consumer market.

Linspire irritated the FOSS purist because it believed the installed and licensed proprietary media codec and player was essential to delivering a commercially viable product.

It sold commercial software through its CNR repository.

Bitstrean fonts. DVD players. Games like Postal.

To this day, Walmart and Consumer Reports find it necessary to publish a disclaimer whenever they expose a newcomer to OEM Linux:

This is a Linux based PC and will not perform completely like a Windows based machine. It can perform basic activities such as E-mail, Web Browsing, Music and Pictures.

To this day, the mass-market Linux PC remains firmly anchored among the bottom-feeders. To this day. Linux hasn't broken through to a 1% share on the consumer desktop. Operating System Market Share

But where's the benefit to Microsoft in any of this?

By the end of that year, wine would be nearly complete, Windows and Linux would support each other's binaries

Binary compatability is just about the worst thing they can do for Windows. The selling point and advantage of Windows isn't stability, or performance, or security, or the OS itself for that matter, it's the application support. Why would people run windows if they can just run their apps on any and every other platform?

Eventually, I think most people would come to accept Windows as a separate end-product

So, it'd be a step down for Windows. Brilliant.

It would be a couple of years before the first solid Linux distros started shipping which included support for Windows programs (and actually worked)

Again, where's the benefit to Windows and to MS? All you've mentioned is how opening up Windows will be good for Linux, and more or less makes Windows and MS insignificant.

This 'MS has to go open because it will benefit Linux (but not MS!) is even more asinine than TFA's 'MS has to go open source because they have to (with no explaination on why)' or TFA's 'MS has to realise that closed source doesn't work anymore' With no examples or explaination offered.

Obviously the model works, because MS is still very profitable, hell Vista, in spite of the whole 'omg omg disastar!' hype is ridiculously profitable, hell, in the short time it's been availible, it has doubled (15.26%) the _combined_ market share of OS X (7.83%) and Linux (0.60%) [see here].

Obviously, the proprietary model has been working for Apple, as OSS-friendly as they are. Obviously it's been working for companies like Adobe, Native Instruments, Ableton, Corel, Steinberg and countless others that continue to be profitable with proprietary software.

IBM, with all their Linux friendliness, still ships AIX and other proprietary software, obviously it still works for them.

We'll see how opening up their crown jewels affects Sun, before we start trying to convince others that they have to open up their stuff because they have to, or that their model doesn't work.

So I think I can safely assume that the people in TFA are blowing smoke out of their asses. I mean, comeon, they're interviewing the ceo of open-exchange for fuck's sake, it's not as if he has a completely skewed viewpoint here, or that "because they have to" doesn't really mean "because I'll directly benefit from it".

FUD works both ways, and this certainly is FUD, albeit a particularily half-assed attempt at it.

According to http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=10 , 4.25%. Vista, meanwhile, has 15.26% and XP has 72.12% marketshare. Mac, Linux, and other operating systems make up the rest of the 8.37%.

If Vista is stumbling terribly with 10% growth in the past year, what does that say about Linux, which has seen only 0.2% growth - and has yet to break into the single digit? Top Operating System Share Trend

Vista will have 20% of the market in July. Four times that of the "MacIntel" - BootCamp - platform. Windows 7 may be simplified and more modular but it will still be Vista in its essentials.

And not only are users downloading it, they're installing and using it. Usage of Firefox 3 has gone from under 1% to over 4% in less than 24 hours. That's a quarter of all Firefox users already using the latest version, or many million new Firefox users.

But enough are willing to pay to make PC gaming a billion dollar industry.

The developer for Linux begins with the handicap of a 0.68% market share -- in a world where Vista has 15%, OSX on the Mac and the iPhone 8%.

Operating System Market Share

When your potential market is already microscopic, you can't afford to lose a significant percentage of sales to the pirate.

Here.

Anything else?

60% of Microsoft's revenues come from outside the US.

Microsoft is long past the point where it can be significantly wounded by a recession in the states.

Microsoft is building a $300 million dollar research campus for 5,000 engineers in Beijing's "Silicon Valley."

Microsoft is very, very strongly positioned in emerging markets. Windows XP and MS Office on the OLPC should have taught the geek that much.

Microsoft's asset is an OS that people are still locked into, but becoming violently sick of.

There is little evidence for this beyond the geek's own fantasies.

Top Operating System Share Trend {By Versions], Operating System Market Share. [June 3, 2008] OS Platform Statistics

In these familiar webstats, OSX holds a familiar, quite comfortable niche, but still only a niche.

MS Vista should reach a 20% share in the Net Applications stats by late summer. Mostly through OEM consumer sales of Vista Premium - which means mostly as a sucessfull competitor to the Mac.

Linux bringing up the rear as always.

60% of Microsoft's revenues come from outside the US.

Microsoft is long past the point where it can be significantly wounded by a recession in the states.

Microsoft is building a $300 million dollar research campus for 5,000 engineers in Beijing's "Silicon Valley."

Microsoft is very, very strongly positioned in emerging markets. Windows XP and MS Office on the OLPC should have taught the geek that much.

Microsoft's asset is an OS that people are still locked into, but becoming violently sick of.

There is little evidence for this beyond the geek's own fantasies.

Top Operating System Share Trend {By Versions], Operating System Market Share. [June 3, 2008] OS Platform Statistics

In these familiar webstats, OSX holds a familiar, quite comfortable niche, but still only a niche.

MS Vista should reach a 20% share in the Net Applications stats by late summer. Mostly through OEM consumer sales of Vista Premium - which means mostly as a sucessfull competitor to the Mac.

Linux bringing up the rear as always.

Lets see (16+18+40)/3

24% sounds close.

Firefox @ 16%
Firefox @ 18%
Firefox @ 40%

So which one is right?

If you meant end-viewer, they aren't really germane to the discussion, since what we're discussing is in the blackbox to them.

It's only "blackbox" if the results cannot be differentiated from another browser/platform. The very fact that a page looks different on some browsers than on others violates the blackbox concept.

Again this goes back to the developers, since it is their duty to make sure their website looks good (or even is viewable) by the most number of people.

"The most of the people" is people who use IE--they still have a 74% marketshare. (Cite)

You really can't separate web developers from end users--web developers not only have to eat their own dogfood (test it on their preferred setup), but everybody else's (test it on non-preferred setups). As it stands, by your own arguments, that means web developers should be writing to IE's peculiarities rather than to standard.

The geek ridiculously overstates his significance in the mass consumer market.

His returns will be lost in the statistical noise. He can't even drive Linux beyond a 0.6% market share in a webstat. Operating System Market Share

Windows Vista alone has 15% of the market in the Net Applications stats. If the geek believes his own propaganda all of that has to come from OEM consumer sales of Vista.

The geek isn't asking about returns of the Linux box.

This is never street theater. It is an ordinary guy who thought the OS was for real.

The geek needs to be reminded that maintaining a dual inventory and support structure costs a retailer serious money. If he can write you off and save a few bucks he will do it in a heartbeat.

There are choices in the consumer market.

You can choose a Mac. You can chose OEM Linux or OEM XP.

[No one wants to build from a kit of parts. Which is why the Geek looks like a space alien when he talks about unbundling the OS from the hardware.]

But the reality - once you get past the Geek - is that these aren't the choices people are making. Top Operating System Share Trend

It doesn't matter which stats you quote. The Mac continues to hold the profitable niche market it claimed about twenty-five years ago.

Linux brings up the rear, with a market share in the single digiit and a trend line as flat as the Kansas praries.

There is no mystery here.

Walmart will sell you the gOS laptop.

The GBook is a great beginner's laptop... This is a Linux based PC and will not perform completely like a Windows based machine. It can perform basic activities such as E-mail, Web Browsing, Music and Pictures.

Damning with faint praise and securely anchoring Linux's reputation in the home market as a bottom-feeder.

Walmart will also sell you an HP Pavilion laptop with 64 bit Vista Premium SP1, NVIDIA DX9 graphics, a dual core AMD Turion CPU and 4 GB RAM for $1000.

For the Intel Core 2 Duo with Blu-Ray drive, 64 bit Vista Premium SP1, HDTV tuner card and NViDIA 512 MB 8600 M GS DX10 graphics add $400.

If you don't believe what Balmer says, maybe consult some trustworthy third-party statistics and see that... he's actually right.

And, in the mean time, 15% of desktop users use Windows Vista.

Does the geek really believe that changes in the user agent are statistically significant?

How many users know the agent exists?

How many would be comfortable making a change?

There is no intelligible reason for the agent to claim that it is running on Vista when it is not running on Vista.

OS Platform Stats [April 2008]

How then to explain why Vista shows a 9% share in the W3Schools stats - up from 0% in January 07 - and Linux 4% - up from 2% in March 03?

The Net Applications are far less charitable:

Operating System Market Share [Versions], Top Operating System Share Trend

You have to explain why the numbers and trend lines for OSX look about right while Linux struggles to gain a 1% share.

Does the geek really believe that changes in the user agent are statistically significant?

How many users know the agent exists?

How many would be comfortable making a change?

There is no intelligible reason for the agent to claim that it is running on Vista when it is not running on Vista.

OS Platform Stats [April 2008]

How then to explain why Vista shows a 9% share in the W3Schools stats - up from 0% in January 07 - and Linux 4% - up from 2% in March 03?

The Net Applications are far less charitable:

Operating System Market Share [Versions], Top Operating System Share Trend

You have to explain why the numbers and trend lines for OSX look about right while Linux struggles to gain a 1% share.

I might just take that bet.

The OEM system install has been the norm in the home and SOHO markets for thirty years. The bare bones PC is for the enthusiast or the IT pro.

I am not convinced that consumer sales of Vista can be so easily ignored.

Operating System Market Share {April 2008]

These web-based stats show Vista with 15% market share. There is simply no good reason to suppose that a system running any other OS would claim to be running Vista.

Changing the user agent is a Geek thing.

I strongly suspect that any general-interest website [like CNN] would show pretty much the same numbers.

i dont think so

GOOG @77% > (YHOO @ 12% + MSFT @ 5%)

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=4

Google - Global 77.23%
Yahoo - Global 12.21%
MSN - Global 3.27%
Microsoft Live Search 2.50%
AOL - Global 2.41%
Ask - Global 1.37%
AltaVista - Global 0.11%
Excite - Global 0.07%
Lycos - Global 0.01%
All the Web - Global 0.01%

You are missing the point - because revenues from the Windows client {measured in the billions of dollars] were disappointing only when compared to last year.

Windows market share remains spectacularly healthy:

Top Operating System Share Trend, Operating System Market Share

You are missing the point - because revenues from the Windows client {measured in the billions of dollars] were disappointing only when compared to last year.

Windows market share remains spectacularly healthy:

Top Operating System Share Trend, Operating System Market Share

Operating System Market Share, Top Operating System Share Trend [May 5, 2008]

Vista has seen 9% growth since June 07. The MacIntel 2%. Linux 0.3%.

but how bout we compare its lifespan to ANY other OS release

How do you define release and how do you define lifespan?

That of the Cheetah (2001)? The Puma (2001)? The Jaguar (2002)? The Panther (2003)? The Tiger (2005)? The Leopard (2007)?

People buy into the bullshit marketing. Its not that the product has merit.

The "sour grapes" argument.

It saves the trouble of looking for any deeper explanation when your product barely shows a pulse. 0.67% of the desktop isn't much of a showing for ten years work.

Operating System Market Share, Top Operating System Share Trend [May 5, 2008]

Vista has seen 9% growth since June 07. The MacIntel 2%. Linux 0.3%.

but how bout we compare its lifespan to ANY other OS release

How do you define release and how do you define lifespan?

That of the Cheetah (2001)? The Puma (2001)? The Jaguar (2002)? The Panther (2003)? The Tiger (2005)? The Leopard (2007)?

People buy into the bullshit marketing. Its not that the product has merit.

The "sour grapes" argument.

It saves the trouble of looking for any deeper explanation when your product barely shows a pulse. 0.67% of the desktop isn't much of a showing for ten years work.

Just to follow up, if you look at Hitslink's two-year view, MacPPC enjoyed a 4.33% share in April 2006, when MacIntel only had .16%. Since then, PPC has gone down -1.39%, while MacIntel has gone up +4.38%. So in fact, two-thirds of the MacIntel increase has been new growth.

Also, a clarification about the summer slump, Mac usually still goes up in May, it's in the June numbers when the slump shows up.

However, most of "Other" on that chart consists of other versions of Windows. Windows is also losing share from Windows 98 and Windows ME. If you look at Hitslink's OS total numbers, you'll see Windows' total share dropping from 92.94% to 91.57% over that same period.

Also, even by your interpretation, only about half of Mac Intel's gain has come at the expense of old PPC machines, not "most." This fits in with Apple's own figures that just over half of Mac buyers at their stores are new to the platform. Also, PPC's share is being diluted by the increase in the number of computers, so not all of its drop is due to replacement.

Note that Mac has a seasonal "summer slump" in Hitslink's figures, with a sharp drop in May. Mac's biggest gains of the year tend to run from back-to-school through the holidays (December or January). So don't be surprised if in a few months there are some people citing Hitslink to claim that "the tide has turned," "the Apple fad has peaked," or whatnot.

Actually, not as much as one might think, according to this chart showing the OS userbase trend from May 2007 to March 2008.

According to the chart, Vista's share increased from 3.75% a year ago to 14% today. The chart also shows that XP's share decreased from 82% to 73.6%. Vista has been cannibalizing XP's share, but Vista+XP today has a 1.6 percentage points greater share today than a year ago (86% in March 2007 to 87.6% in March 2008).

The chart shows that Mac share went from 6.5% a year ago to 7.5% today, which is a significant increase. But note that the chart separates PPC Macs ("Mac OS") from Intel Macs ("MacIntel"), and here you can see that MacIntel's share has increased from 2.5% to 4.5% while PPC Mac OS decreased from 4% down to 3%. That is, most Mac sales are due to people upgrading from Mac PPC to Mac Intel in the same way that most Vista sales are at the expense of XP's share.

So XP+Vista increased by 1.6 percentage points from a year ago, while PPC Mac + Intel Mac increased by 2% from a year ago. Not much difference, and with Vista well ahead of the combined Mac total (14% vs 7%) it's difficult to argue that Vista caused mass defections to the Mac.

However it CAN be argued when you look at the Windows 2000 stats. Windows 2000 went from 4.3% to 2.3% during that same time period. It appears that of that loss of 2 percentage points, 1.7 went to Vista and the other 0.3 went to MacIntel. I think that Mac also gained from the decrease in "Other", which decreased from 2.5% to 1.9%.

and even NetApplications reports that users are already switching to Firefox 3.

I think W3Counter's numbers are probably fairly close. W3Schools reports Linux at 3.9%, while this tracker says it's at 0.61%. That puts W3Counter somewhere in the middle. All of these trackers show a gradual increasing trend over the past couple years...I doubt this will change in the long run. There's lots of shiny new distros coming out every few months, each better than the last - encouraging new users to try them out, while current users are unlikely to switch back to proprietary OSs, mostly because so many of the applications they come to depend would not be available or their alternatives are not free.

I have said this before, but it will bear repeating:

The PC market splintered into distinct segments a long time ago.

The multimedia home pc is not the locked-down corporate desktop. It is a fundamentally different platform.

[Red Hat Global Desktop] encountered a variety of problems with developing the product including startup delays with resellers, hardware and market changes and "some multimedia codec licensing knotholes".

If anything, Red Hat aught to produce a home user version that is so easy to install a 5 year old could do it.

For thirty years, the PC has been sold as a plug and play home appliance. The DIY install is never going to catch on.

And leverage the Vista mess and hand me down computers. Sell it for $20 a download. Get it out there as a choice for new laptops.

Vista is closing in on 20% of the consumer market. It should have 50% by fall.

Vista has not been a failure here. Top Operating System Share Trend [By Versions]

The $700 laptop at Walmart.com starts at dual core, 2 GB RAM and Vista Premium. $100 less than the Vista Premium holiday specials last fall.

Linux remains solidly anchored among the bottom feeders - Linux defines the bottom feeder at Walmart.

That is not an image that is easy to shed.

The "Green PC" shipped without a working modem - at a time when Walmart was still selling AOL Essentials - dialup at $10/mo - to its many low income, rural and small town customers.

Growth curve?

What growth curve?

Top Operating System Share Trend [By Versions]
Top Operating System Share Trend

I've played pool tables with a more visible slope than this particular measure of the trend line for Linux - and since these are web based stats, I am going to assume that the numbers for Vista for real.

- - a fair representation of Vista's strength in the consumer market.

20% by the end of in April. 50% probably no later than late summer or early fall. The Back-To-School sale.

In the W3Schools OS Platform Statistics it took OSX and Linux five years to edge up from 4% to 8% of the market - and these stats track the pro, the web developer.

Growth curve?

What growth curve?

Top Operating System Share Trend [By Versions]
Top Operating System Share Trend

I've played pool tables with a more visible slope than this particular measure of the trend line for Linux - and since these are web based stats, I am going to assume that the numbers for Vista for real.

- - a fair representation of Vista's strength in the consumer market.

20% by the end of in April. 50% probably no later than late summer or early fall. The Back-To-School sale.

In the W3Schools OS Platform Statistics it took OSX and Linux five years to edge up from 4% to 8% of the market - and these stats track the pro, the web developer.

The Geek has an immature sense of time.

The Roman thought of his history as beginning in 440 BC with the founding of the city. The western empire fell ca 440 AD. The eastern empire had a 1000 year run beyond that.

The Roman Catholic Church is still a going concern after 2000 years.

One day soon the stockholders will ask why Microsoft is sinking so much money into XBox 360 or any of those other loss-making projects that Microsoft enjoys so much. They will start to wonder if profits wouldn't be higher if Office were in a separate company, not fettered to any particular operating system.

MS Office has the PC and Mac.

Linux on the desktop has a 0.61% market share.

In these web based stats, Vista is closing in on a 20% share of the desktop market and should have 50% by late summer or into the fall. Top Operating System Share Trend

The OS still matters and the OS is still Windows.

You are a little behind the times. The XBox division is profitable.

In retail sales, Office 2007/2008 for the PC and the Mac pummels their competition into oblivion.

Microsoft has been posting spectacular results in fiscal 2008. 60% of Microsoft's revenues come from outside the US - and those revenues have been growing 20%-30% each quarter. .

But this also exposes the reason why Microsoft has 90% of the market. Operating System Market Share

The reluctance to upgrade can be exaggerated: Top Operating System Share Trend In these web-based stats there seems to be little to stop Vista from reaching a 30% share in a month or two and 50% by late summer.

The geek who wants to dispute these numbers needs to explain why they track pretty damn well with the estimates you see posted for the Mac.

But this also exposes the reason why Microsoft has 90% of the market. Operating System Market Share

The reluctance to upgrade can be exaggerated: Top Operating System Share Trend In these web-based stats there seems to be little to stop Vista from reaching a 30% share in a month or two and 50% by late summer.

The geek who wants to dispute these numbers needs to explain why they track pretty damn well with the estimates you see posted for the Mac.

Funny that you say "Proof", but don't provide any. 91% of PCs would like to disagree with your statement. The closest info I could find to your statement was here, but that's just consumer PCs, completely disregarding the Enterprise market.

Operating System Market Share for March 2008
Top Operating System Share Trend for May, 2007 to March, 2008
Operating System Market Share Trend for 'Linux' for May, 2007 to March, 2008