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Research firm IDC projects: The smartphone market continues to be challenged and 2019 is projected to experience its third consecutive year of declining shipments. Worldwide smartphone volumes are forecast to fall by 0.8% in 2019 with volumes dipping to 1.39 billion. However, the smartphone market will begin to pick up momentum this year with year-over-year growth of 2.3% expected in the second half of the year. Over the long term, smartphone shipments are forecast to reach 1.54 billion units in 2023.

The current year is expected to witness a new high for technological innovation with the introduction of foldable devices and 5G smartphones. Marketing buzz around 5G is in its early stages but expected to ramp up quickly. And while use cases for upgrading to a 5G device/service remain unclear, it is evident that after 2019 the adoption will begin to attain significant numbers. IDC currently expects 5G smartphone shipments to account for roughly 1 out of every 4 smartphones shipped globally in 2023.

2018 was the worst year ever for smartphone shipments, according to the latest figures from research firm IDC. It means Apple isn't the only company fighting to keep people interested in buying new phones every year. From a report: IDC said 1.4 billion smartphones were sold in 2018, marking a 4.1 percent decline for the year in an industry that's accustomed to rapid growth. In 2014, as well, 1.4 billion phones were shipped, which means the industry seems to have regressed about 5 years. Shipments shrank 4.9 percent for the fourth quarter of 2018, IDC said. Apple said earlier this week that iPhone revenues were 15 percent lower than last year. CEO Tim Cook said the strengthened dollar, an economic slowdown in China, lower subsidies on phones and its battery replacement program contributed to the drop in sales. Samsung phone shipments declined 5.5 percent and Apple's slipped 11.5 percent during the quarter, IDC said. But Huawei, which was able to capitalize on China, saw a 33.6 percent bump in shipments. Chinese vendors Oppo and Xiaomi also increased shipments, IDC said.

An anonymous reader quotes Ars Technica: Microsoft was the fifth-biggest PC maker in the U.S. in the third quarter of this year, according to industry advisory firm Gartner. The top spot in the U.S. belongs to HP, with about 4.5 million machines sold, ahead of Dell at 3.8 million, Lenovo at 2.3 million, and Apple at 2 million. The gap between fourth and fifth is pretty big -- Microsoft sold only 0.6 million Surface devices last quarter -- but it suggests that Microsoft's PC division is heading in the right direction, with sales 1.9 percent higher than the same quarter last year. The company pushed down to sixth place was Acer. The current quarter should be better still; the Surface Pro, Surface Laptop, and Surface Studio have all been given hardware refreshes which, when combined with the always-busy holiday season, should stimulate higher sales.

Globally, both Gartner and IDC reported a flat PC market (up 0.1 percent in Gartner's view, down 0.9 percent in IDC's), after the previous quarter's modest growth.
"The PC market continued to be driven by steady corporate PC demand, which was driven by Windows 10 PC hardware upgrades," said one Gartner analyst.

In defining what constitutes a PC, Gartner includes notebooks and "premium" ultramobile devices -- but does not include iPads or Chromebooks.

During the 3rd Quarter of 2018, Microsoft reportedly broke into the top five list of PC vendors in the U.S. for the first time, thanks to its line of Surface computers, laptops, and tablets. VentureBeat reports: Q3 2018 was flat; it did not continue the growth we saw in the previous quarter. Gartner estimates that worldwide PC shipments increased 0.1 percent to 67.2 million units while IDC counts a 0.9 percent decline to 67.4 million units. Gartner's top five vendors were Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple, and Acer (in that order) while IDC's were Lenovo, HP, Dell, Acer, and Apple (also in that order). But Gartner also provides a U.S. breakdown every quarter, and Q3 2018 was the first time that Microsoft made an appearance, displacing Acer.

Microsoft is still a far cry from the other players in the top 5, and its shipments were in fact only up slightly by 11,000 units, gaining just 0.1 percentage points (to 4.1 percent market share). Still, Dell and Apple were down, and the overall U.S. market was flat (down some 50,000 units) in Q3 2018, so in that context, Surface sales are doing just fine.

According to research firm IDC, Apple sold 4.7 million Apple Watch units last quarter, capturing 17 percent of the global market. The only other company close on Apple's heels is Xiaomi, which "trailed Apple by two percentage points in market share and 500,000 unit shipments in the second quarter of the year," reports The Verge. From the report: Fitbit, Huawei, and Garmin are far behind, with IDC reporting that higher demand for more fully featured smartwatches is driving demand for Apple products and reducing the popularity of lower-cost fitness trackers. IDC stresses that this is a natural cycle for consumer electronics and that fitness-focused devices will still have a place in the market going forward. IDC says demand for its LTE-equipped Series 3 device largely drove Apple's wearable sales last quarter, and the device received a number of discounts at big-box retail stores that may have led to a surge in consumer purchases. Refurbished versions of the Apple Watch Series 3 also went up for sale on Apple's retail site starting in February.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: For the first time in seven years, Samsung and Apple have not taken the top two positions in the worldwide smartphone market. All hail Huawei. Although Samsung held onto first place -- the South Korean giant typically dominates the first three quarters of the year, with the American company winning the fourth quarter -- Huawei passed Apple for second place this part quarter. The Q2 2018 figures come from IDC (though Canalys and Strategy Analytics both agree that Huawei passed Apple in the quarter).

Similar to the smartwatch market, the tablet market is in rough shape. According to estimates provided by IDC, the tablet market has been in decline for eight quarters in a row, and no company managed to ship more than 10 million units. VentureBeat reports: Q3 2016 saw a 14.7 percent year-over-year decline: 43 million units shipped worldwide, compared to 50.5 million units in the same quarter last year. Both Apple and Samsung saw their shipment numbers fall once again, though Apple gained share, up 1.9 points to 21.5 percent market share. Samsung slipped 0.9 points to 15.1 percent, but still shipped more than double the units than those behind it. This is the third time that Amazon has placed in the top five in a non-Q4 quarter -- typically, the company only shows up due to the holiday season. The company's low-cost Fire tablet has propelled the company to the top, though the growth shown is skewed by the fact that IDC did not include the 6-inch tablets offered by Amazon in Q3 2015. Lenovo shipped fewer units but grew 0.3 percent to 6.3 percent share, while Huawei shipped more units and gained 1.9 points to 5.6 percent. Both companies have maintained their positions for many quarters now and don't look like they will be displaced.

Brittany A. Roston, writing for Slashgear: In 2014, smartphone shipments grew a massive 27.8-percent, and the next year, 2015, smartphone shipments grew by 10.5-percent. The International Data Corporation (IDC) expects that we'll see a substantial slowdown in shipments this year, with 2016 (possibly) ending up at around only 3.1-percent. According to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, this year will probably see about 1.48 billion smartphone shipments, a number that is estimated to climb to 1.84 billion by 2020.According to IDC, Android will see a YoY (year-on-year) growth of 6.2%, whereas Apple's iOS will drop by 2% this year. Also this year, the average selling price of an Android handset will be $218, which IDC expects to fall below $200 in 2019.

An anonymous reader writes: Smartphone vendors shipped a total of 334.9 million smartphones worldwide last quarter. This figure is up just 0.2 percent from the 334.3 million units in Q1 2015, marking the smallest year-over-year growth on record. We saw hints of this in yesterday's Apple earnings report, when the company reported an iPhone sales drop for the first time. Despite the poor state of the worldwide smartphone market, Samsung continues to dominate. In Q1 2016, the South Korean company once again shipped more smartphones than any other vendor.

Nerval's Lobster writes: The dreaded term "fragmentation" has been applied to Android more times than anyone can count over the past half-decade. That's part of the reason why game developers often build for iOS before Android, even though Android offers a bigger potential customer base worldwide, and more types of gaming experiences. Fortunately, new sets of tools allow game developers to build for one platform and port their work (fairly) easily to another. "We've done simultaneously because it is such a simple case of swapping out the textures and also hooking up different APIs for scores and achievements," London-based indie developer Tom Vian told Dice. "I've heard that iOS is a better platform to launch on first, but there's no sense for us in waiting when we can spend half a day and get it up and running." So is fragmentation an overhyped roadblock, or is it a genuine problem for developers who work in mobile?

Velcroman1 writes "Fearing rapidly plummeting sales of traditional laptops and desktop computers — which fell by another 10 percent or so in 2013 — manufacturers are planning a revolt against Microsoft and the Windows operating system, analysts say. At the 2014 CES in Las Vegas, multiple computer makers will unveil systems that simultaneously run two different operating systems, both Windows and the Android OS that powers many of the world's tablets and smartphones, two different analysts said recently. The new devices will be called 'PC Plus' machines, explained analyst Tim Bajarin. 'A PC Plus machine will run Windows 8.1 but will also run Android apps as well,' Bajarin wrote. Another analyst put the threat to Windows bluntly: 'This should scare the heck out of Microsoft.'"

itwbennett writes "A new IDC study has found that 'of the 18.5 million software developers in the world, about 7.5 million — roughly 40 percent — are so-called hobbyist developers,' which by IDC's definition is 'someone who spends 10 hours a month or more writing computer or mobile device programs, even though they are not paid primarily to be a programmer.' Lumped into this group are students, people hoping to strike it rich with mobile apps, and people who code on the job but aren't counted among the developer ranks."

symbolset writes "Zach Whittaker over at ZDNet covers an IDC report. In it the 2013 9.7% forecast decline in PC shipments is advanced to 10.1%. Further, IDC's longer-term forecast turns quite grim: contracting 23% from 2012 levels by 2017. There is also a projection of future Windows tablet sales, and a statement that total Windows tablet sales for 2013 are expected to be 'less than 7.5 million units.'"

Nerval's Lobster writes "Google Android's dominance of the smartphone space has been reinforced by a new IDC study that places its market-share at 68.3 percent, well ahead of iOS at 18.8 percent. But which version of Android is most preferred by users? A new set of graphs on the Android Developers Website offers the answer to that question: 'Gingerbread,' or Android versions 2.3 through 2.3.7, dominates with 50.8 percent of the Android pie. 'Ice Cream Sandwich,' or versions 4.0.3 through 4.0.4, is second with 27.5 percent, with the latest 'Jelly Bean' build at 6.7 percent. As demonstrated by that graph on the Android Developers Website, there are a lot of devices running a lot of different versions of Android out there in the ecosystem, all with different capabilities. In turn, that could make it difficult for Google to deliver 'the latest and greatest' to any customer that wants it, and potentially irritates those customers who buy a smartphone (particularly a high-end one) expecting regular upgrades." Here's how Slashdot readers using Android break down: 31.0% Jelly Bean, 31.5% Ice Cream Sandwich, 0.7% Honeycomb, 22.8% Gingerbread, 4.3% Froyo, 1.1% Eclair, 0.05% Donut, 0.02% Cupcake, 8.5% unknown. Looks like you folks are ahead of the curve. iOS breaks down like this: 67% iOS 6, 28.6% iOS 5, 3.2% iOS 4, 0.5% iOS 3, 0.7% unknown. (These numbers include more than just phones, of course.) Overall, our iOS traffic (8.74%) is higher than our Android traffic (6.75%). Windows Phone and BlackBerry both clock in at about 0.2%.

angry tapir writes "Lenovo has taken the crown from Hewlett-Packard to become the world's top seller of PCs, research firm Gartner said in a study released this week. Lenovo took the top spot during a quarter in which PC shipments dropped overall due to a weak economy and pressure from mobile devices. Of the top four PC vendors, only Lenovo was able to grow its shipments. Its PC sales increased by almost 10 percent to 13.77 million units, giving it 15.7 percent of the market, Gartner said." Not so fast, says analysis firm IDC. They say that HP is still in the lead but Lenovo is very close.

Un pobre guey writes "Should you develop apps for Windows 8? Well, the hype and flogging are apparently in full swing. From the article: 'To be clear, Windows Phone 8 is not a slam dunk. Some, such as IDC, believe Windows Phone will eclipse iOS by 2016. Others, though, believe the trajectories of Android and iOS can't be slowed in the next few years. Nonetheless, I think a bet on Windows Phone 8 is justifiable, even wise, since anyone who purchases a new Windows Phone 8 device likely will want to load it with the latest and greatest apps.'" Another reader points out that the full Windows Phone 8 SDK was leaked online recently, which led to some interesting discoveries: "For starters, it appears that the API is very much like the full WinRT API, but it has no JavaScript support. There is also no support for creating and working with Silverlight/XNA style. This is a bit surprising because I and most developers were under the impression that Microsoft would support the migration of Silverlight apps to HTML5 and JavaScript, but there isn't even support for JavaScript to access the phone's services. The best you can hope for is using the JavaScript support in IE10."

WrongSizeGlass writes "InformationWeek is reporting that Windows Phone 7 will overtake Apple's iPhone by 2015 according to IDC. IDC predicts 2015 will bring: Android 45.4%, WP7 & WinMobile 20.9%, iOS 15.3%, RIM 13.7%, Symbian 0.2%, and 'Others' 4.6%. These numbers would move WP7 into 2nd place and leave iOS in 3rd place with a slightly smaller piece of the smart phone pie than they current hold (15.7%). The author of the InformationWeek story isn't buying IDC's forecast, because of WP7's anemic sales to date and Microsoft's recent stumbles with its first two updates. I have to wonder if WP7 will still be Microsoft's smartphone OS in 2015 or if they'll have moved to WP8."

Microsoft Windows still dominates the desktop. But in many other areas, including Web servers and supercomputing, Microsoft is just one player among many, and often a weak player at that. On the gaming side, despite the latest xBox getting all kinds of media buzz as "the" console to buy, Sony's Playstation outsells the xBox at least two to one, and many analysts expect Sony to widen that gap even more when Playstation 3 comes out in the Spring of 2006. On the Internet, MSN and MSN Search are so far behind AOL and Google that it isn't funny. And even on the desktop, Linux keeps getting stronger, while Mac OS X is commonly accepted as more reliable, secure, and user-oriented than Windows. So why do we keep saying Microsoft is a monopoly? Microsoft (Slowly) Moves Away from Monopolistic Behavior

If a major IT user tells a Microsoft salesperson that he or she is thinking about switching to Linux, Microsoft will usually come back with a cut-price offer, something the company never used to do. Microsoft also now sells something called Windows Starter Edition in some parts of the world -- supposedly for as low as $37 or $38 (US) in Thailand, including a basic version of Microsoft Office. In other words, Microsoft is starting to compete on price, which is not monopoly-style behavior.

This does not mean Microsoft has suddenly adopted a "let's all love one another" attitude.I believe Microsoft is getting more concerned about interoperability not out of goodness, but because of market pressure. But in the long run, as long as Microsoft stops treating every other operating system and file format as some sort of devilspawn, life is a little easier for those of us who would rather not use their products, and that's what really matters.

Microsoft Explorer No Longer Rules the Online World

A majority of desktop computer users may still run Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, but it no longer has 95% market share. In a 2002 book, and again last year in an online article, I warned Web designers not to make IE-only sites, just as in the (distant) past I'd warned them not to make Netscape-only sites. Some listened. Some didn't.

Firefox adoption may have slowed in 2005, but it certainly hasn't stopped. Opera has become enough of a force that we hear rumors about first Google, then Microsoft, buying it. In any case, whether MSIE is currently running on 90% of all desktops or on only 70% (as a few surveys indicate), it is becoming less popular every month. Now Microsoft has decided that Explorer is no longer fit for Mac users, so its market share will drop even more. Sure, there's a new version of Explorer coming out, but it isn't going to help the millions of "legacy" Windows users who don't want to buy XP. If they want modern browser functionality, they must switch to Firefox, Opera or another non-Microsoft browser.

'The Network is the Computer'

I don't think this is quite true today, if by "the network" we're talking about applications delivered over the Internet instead of over well-maintained LANs. Back in October I explained why I don't think Internet-delivered applications are quite "there" yet. More recently, Salesforce.com had an outage that angered many of its (claimed) 350,000 subscribers. Worse, ZDNet blogger Phil Wainewright pointed out that Salesforce.com compounded the problem, and possibly made users leery of all Internet-delivered applications' claims of "99.9% reliability," by poor communication with its users.

Most of the Web 2.0 (and even Web 3.0) stuff that's getting so much hype these days is not OS-dependent. You can run things like Google Maps on Linux, Mac OS, Unix, and even Windows, using any standards-compliant browser you choose.

Even Microsoft is trying to get into the Web 2.0 game. I got a press release from their PR people that included this sentence:"And if you enjoy taking a drive to check out your neighborhood’s Christmas lights visit this great Windows Live Local developer application at http://msnsearch101.com/searchmap."

I found this online utility's behavior strange and primitive, not nearly up to the standards of Google Maps and some of the mashups based on it. "Ah," I thought, "that's probably because I'm trying to use it with Linux and Mozilla." So I turned to my one Windows (XP) computer and checked the site with both Firefox and Explorer. For some reason the map background didn't load at all in Firefox, on Windows, and its behavior in Explorer, on Windows, was just as clunky as it was in Mozilla, on Linux.

If this is supposed to be a sample of what Windows Live Local can do, I don't think Microsoft is headed for any kind of monopoly -- or even much market share -- in the online map business. Not only that, it makes me wonder how good their promised Microsoft® Office Live is going to be. If even a quarter of the rumors we've heard about Google and Sun joining up to produce a Webified version of OpenOffice.org are true, I suspect Microsoft is going to be a distant also-ran in the (inevitable) Internet-delivered office software business, too.

Hundreds of Thousands of Competitors

It's fun to play the "Google is cooler than Microsoft" game and talk about how Google, not Microsoft, has become the hot place for top-end programmers to work if they want to make their mark on the world, but even Google can only hire a tiny fraction of the world's software development talent. There are over 100,000 Open Source projects on SourceForge.net (which is owned by the same company that owns Slashdot), and SourceForge.net is but one of many Open Source and Free Software hosting services out there. There are literally millions of programmers working on Free and Open Source Software, plus countless others working on personal proprietary projects.

We've all heard -- probably too many times -- the old saw, "If you have enough monkeys banging randomly on typewriters, they will eventually type the works of William Shakespeare." This may or may not be true. But it is certain that if you put millions of programmers in front of millions of computers and let them do whatever they want, some of them will turn out brilliant, world-changing work. Even if 999 out of 1000 of our putative programmers work on established projects or never finish what they start, that still gives us thousands of potential world-changing software projects, most of which won't be developed by Google (or Microsoft) employees.

I've been to India, and the smartest programmers I met there weren't working for outsourcing mills but worked for themselves. I'm sure there are plenty of self-employed programmers in China, Brazil, Kenya, and almost everywhere else on this planet, too, and there are certainly plenty of them here in the United States. And, all over the world, millions of programmers have day jobs doing routine work for corporate employers to put food on the table, and do their "real work" at home, at night.

Neither you nor I nor Google's management nor Microsoft's management know what might be going on right now in the mind of a brilliant Saudi woman with a computer science degree who can't work outside her home because her country's laws keep her from mixing with men who aren't related to her. There may be a poorly-dressed young man coding furiously in a Beijing Internet cafe, while you read this article, whose new operating system will make all current ones obsolete -- and you may not learn about his work until it shows up in a Chinese-made $100 laptop computer.

When Bill Gates and his friends started Microsoft, it was one of very few companies that sold nothing but personal computer software, and the others were so small that Microsoft managed to buy most of its competitors -- or at least license their best work or hire away their best programmers. Back then, programmers were scarce and expensive, as were the computers they programmed on. Now there are both programmers and computers all over the world, linked together by the Internet. The Internet not only helps programmers collaborate with each other across geographic boundaries, but allows them to distribute their work without shipping physical products.

The only reason to have a software company's employees work in an office these days is control, both of employees' schedules and of what they work on. Self-motivated geniuses have no need of offices and may even resent being asked to show up at one on a regular schedule, which means that many of the world's best programmers will never work for Google, Microsoft or any other company. Instead, they'll start their own software companies or, in many cases, Open Source-based consultancies.

So Microsoft doesn't face a few dozen competitors, as it did in the 1980s, but hundreds of thousands. And these competitors are spread all over the world. This kind of competition is a lot harder to co-opt, buy out or fend off than competition from a single company, a la Netscape, or even from a group of companies as substantial as IBM, Sun, Oracle, and their computing industry peers.

Competition has Forced Microsoft to Improve its Products

Microsoft may no longer be able to hire all the top programmers it wants, but there is already plenty of talent among its 60,000-plus employees, and they have done some excellent work in recent years. Windows XP is immeasurably better and more stable than Windows ME or Windows 98. The next generation of Explorer will have many of the modern browser features that those of us who use Firefox or Opera have gotten accustomed to. Microsoft Office may not have some of the features OpenOffice.org users take for granted, like a built-in graphics utility, the ability to act as a front end for industrial-strength free databases like MySQL, and the ability to save your work in 30+ different Open and proprietary formats, including PDF. But Microsoft Office today is a lot better than it was 10 years ago, and the next version may even use a sort-of free XML file format that may not be as open and standardized as the OASIS Open Document Format used by OpenOffice.org, but is less closed and less proprietary than previous Microsoft file formats.

A true monopoly would not need to make these improvements in its products. It would give you whatever it wanted, at whatever price it wanted to charge. It would not be selling cut-down versions of its products at cut-rate prices in developing countries -- many of which, you may note, are rapidly turning into "software developing" countries.

Without Linux, combined with Apple's move to BSD-based Mac OS X, I doubt that Microsoft would have put much development effort into Windows. They sure didn't do much with Explorer between the time they crushed Netscape and the time when Firefox started making a big splash, did they?

The U.S. antitrust case against Microsoft wasn't about the company being a monopoly (which courts agreed that it was at the time), but about illegal misuse of that monopoly. That case was settled in a way that left Microsoft essentially unharmed, but with a judge overseeing its actions for five years, a time period that is going to end before long.

The Age of the Software Monopoly is Over

IBM tried to create a monopoly in the business desktop computer business, but failed to hold onto its market-leading position as dozens, then hundreds, and later thousands of competitors made better/faster/cheaper PCs. Even today, while Dell is the world's largest personal computer vendor, if you add up all the market share reports from major computer vendors in this C|Net article, you'll see that they account for around 60% -- not 100% -- of total sales, with smaller companies getting the rest. (And some of those companies are *really* small, like the one-man Bradenton, Florida, shop where my sailing buddy Gene just bought his latest home computer.)

The personal computer hardware business has become totally demonopolized, decentralized, democratized, and internationalized. If you have enough mechanical ability to assemble components neatly (and enough sales ability to get people to buy what you make), you can get into it yourself with a very small investment, just as Michael Dell started out reselling computer components and assembling systems in his college dorm room.

Starting a software business takes even less investment. If you're a competent programmer -- or you have a friend who is a competent programmer and you are a whiz-bang marketing person -- you have everything you need to get going. You can either produce and sell proprietary software or customize (and probably install and maintain) Free or Open Source Software for corporate clients. If the Internet is your primary sales and distribution channel, you don't need to live and work in expensive IT business hotbeds like Silicon Valley or Boston, either: JBoss, for example, is based in Atlanta, Georgia; and Digium, the company behind Asterisk, is in Huntsville, Alabama.

There are software businesses springing up all over the place. Most of them are tiny, and few of them will ever get big enough that analyst firms like Gartner or IDC will track their market share (or even notice them). But there are so many of them being started that, in aggregate, they are becoming a more significant market force than any single big software company, even Microsoft.

This doesn't mean Microsoft will be replaced next year by 100,000 startups. The company will still be around, it will still get lots of press, and -- assuming it embraces (but does not keep trying to extend and extinguish) Open Standards -- it will still be a powerful force in the software world.

But no matter what Microsoft does, it will never have a software monopoly again. Nor will any other company. The barriers to entry in the software business have become too low for that to happen, and too many skilled software developers are learning that they can earn at least as much working for themselves as they would by working for big software companies.

Small is Beautiful was a fine book title in 1973. Today, it's a fine description of the software industry's future.

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Have something important to say to the Slashdot community? Email roblimo at slashdot period org the complete article (or an article proposal).

prostoalex writes "Just when you thought all the software niches were taken, IDC comes out with the report saying $12 million was spent on spyware removal tools in 2003, and $305 million will be spent in 2008. IDC also estimates two-thirds of PC users out there are infected. Large PC vendors are waking up to the spyware threat, having their call centers overwhelmed with spyware-related calls."

linuxscrub writes "I guess the previous articles about internet traffic doubling/[time period] being wrong were wrong? A new IDC report states that internet traffic will nearly double annually until 2007. They even use /.'s favorite unit of capacity/storage, the LOC. They predict that internet traffic will be 64,000 LOC/day! Wow, 64000 LOC, that sure sounds impressive!!"

Okay, here's a nice "behind the curtains" peek into the way tech industry analysts (who are not the same as stock analysts) get and interpret their data, courtesy of IDC analyst Dan Kusnetzky, in the form of answers to the insightful questions you asked him last week.

First, Dan Kusnetzky says,

I'm responsible for research on access-point device management software, operating environment software (embedded, client and server), clustering and high availability software, web-centric computing software, and some portions of storage software. You'll note that PCs, workstations, and servers were not listed anywhere. My team follows software, not hardware.

Other groups within IDC conduct extensive research into hardware (PCs, handheld devices, appliance servers, servers, storage systems, etc.). My team and I are part of IDC's software research group.

Now, on to the questions...

1) I just have to ask...
by Ded Bob

Might he have the stats on the BSD's. People from the BSD community are curious. :)

Kusnetzky:

BSD revenue or paid copies are tracked as part of IDC's research on Unix. In 1999, just over 8,000 paid copies of BSD server software were shipped. This would give BSD about 0.9% share of worldwide Unix server operating environment shipments.

The 2000 figures have not yet made it through IDC's publication process and so I will not pre-release them here. IDC has a policy that subscribers see research first.

2) Funding
by ritlane

In studies of market share (or studies in general), we often hear quotes about who funded them. This seems to somehow imply that those who funded the study had some influence in how the data was gathered/interpreted.

My question is: Do those who fund a study influence how the study turns out (i.e. Microsoft studies show higher MS market share). Or is it that these corporations only decide to fund groups who they know will most likely return results in their favor.

Kusnetzky:

Over 95% of the research which IDC produces has not been sponsored. Therefore, our research studies are completely independent. In the few cases where IDC performs specific research for a client, IDC has strict guidelines and review processes in place to ensure the objectivity of our research. IDC never does market share studies on a sponsored basis.

3) More breakdown needed
by BillyGoatThree

When People magazine does an issue devoted to "what's hot" in fashion, do they interview Jane Doe from Des Moines, Iowa? No.

So why are OS numbers reported with equal rating? Not all users are equally suited to *choose* an OS, therefore not all users *choices* are equally interesting. I'd really like to see a breakdown of OS by user-type (levels of education, field of degree if applicable, occupation, etc). Keep in mind this applies just as much to business. A technology company presumably put more informed thought into their choice of server than an art supply house or whatever.

Kusnetzky:

IDC conducts research which will help its subscribers make better business decisions. This often means surveying decision-makers who make the purchasing decision rather than the people who actually use the products. This also tends to mean that academically interesting, but not commercially viable, research may not be done at all.

The complete findings of IDC's research are supplied only to subscribers. So, the snippets of data that Slashdot community members may have seen in magazines only includes information IDC chose to make public. Quite often, IDC's intent is to interest companies in purchasing the entire study. 8^) Another point is that it is quite possible that the findings which are mentioned in the press were taken out of context or mentioned incorrectly.

4)Self-fulfilling analysis?
by dvk

Do you think that there exists a possibility (or can even provide examples of) self-fulfilling analysis, such as "analysis says X is losing market share=people get skeptical about X=X loses market share although it may not have done so otherwise"?

If it is possible or already happened, do analysts in general (and you in particular) find it a worrisom possibility, and if so, are there any attempts/ideas to deal with the issue?

Kusnetzky:

Having studied a great deal of physics in college, I understand the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. That theory indicates that it is impossible to observe a system without interacting with it in some way.

While I suspect that studies have been done to detail how analysts (and journalists for that matter) influence the creation of products and their success in the market, I have not read them and, thus, can not comment on what they may or may not say.

5)Data origins
by m2

Do you base your data mostly on marketing analysis or do you actually go a pay a consultor to scan machines on the net? If there are scans involved, how do you pick the IP blocks to be scanned and what's the uncertainty associated with such a method (and how is this uncertainty guessed)? If there are no scans involved, why not? If this is "maket analysis", can you defined that for me? Which factors are involved? And a different question: who's the target market for this kind of study? How much does such a thing cost?

Kusnetzky:

IDC conducts two types of research -- demand-side and supply-side. Demand-side (end-user) research is designed to shine light on who is buying and using information technology products, how these products are being used, and what plans decision-makers have for future purchases. A scan of the network is not involved in this process. Contacting people and working with them is the basis of IDC's demand-side research. Network scans, while interesting, are not part of IDC's current research methodology.

Another important point is that a network scan would only show systems which were up and available at the time of the scan. Any systems protected by a firewall wouldn't appear. This means that the study would not be able to shine light on what organizations were using inside of their firewalls.

The cost of demand-side studies is driven by how many respondents are needed, how many questions must be asked, and how many countries are included. A small study conducted in North America which asks a few questions can be conducted for tens of thousands of dollars. The data gathering phase of such studies might be completed in a few weeks. A large, multi-country study which must be segmented by company size, market type, etc. might cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars. The data gathering phase of this type of project might six or more months to complete.

Supply-side research shines light on revenues, shipments, technology trends, etc. IDC gathers information from the financial reports of public companies and from public statements made by executives of privately held companies. This data is then segmented into 102 different software markets, 9 different operating environment platforms, and 6 different geographical areas. The software markets, by the way, are defined by a software taxonomy which attempts to define a list of markets which is both exhaustive and mutually exclusive.

The company data segmented using this model is offered to representatives of each of the companies. After the company representatives have had a chance to review the models, an IDC analyst then contacts the representative to verify the segmentation.

Once IDC has completed this process, the company models are examined by internal and external reviewers. Any questions which arise during the review process are brought back to the company representatives and resolved to IDC's satisfaction.

IDC goes beyond determining the revenues to modeling revenue or paid shipments in some markets. In this case, the revenues produced by the first process are segmented using demand-side data which shows the average shipment value. The modeled shipment data is, as with revenue data, examined by both internal and external reviewers. As before, any questions are resolved before data is published.

IDC, by the way, is watching over 1,200 companies worldwide. Revenue data from these companies is collected on a quarterly basis, segmented into IDC's taxonomic software markets and then stored in the IDC software research group's software forecaster database for analysis.

6) *what* constitutes a Linux server?
by Anonymous Coward

At what point does a computer become a server? Many Linux desktops have ftp, telnet & http ports open, so do they count as severs too?

Kusnetzky:

IDC's software group is using a very simple definition. If it serves the needs of a single person, it is called a client. If it serves the needs of many people it is a server, regardless of the system configuration. IDC's enterprise server research team has detailed definitions of different server configurations, but I won't repeat them here.

Linux, as observed in a recent study (December 2000, N=1583 North American and Western European respondents), appears to have a different usage pattern now than seen in earlier studies. This recent survey showed that just over a third of Linux shipments were used as client operating environments, roughly a third of Linux shipments were used as server operating environments, and just under 30% of Linux shipments were used on a workstation which supported the workload of a single person and provided some service to a workgroup. We're calling that new category "Serverstations." For historical purposes, Serverstations are currently allocated across client and server operating environment shipment totals. IDC will be publishing data on each of these categories in the near future.

7) Polling questions
by cavemanf16

I have often wondered how biased polls are based on the questions asked, the demographics of the people polled, etc. When results about polls are made public, is it also possible to obtain information about how the poll was conducted in a simple, by request method? Now if the answer to that question is, no, how much can we rely on polls, since we have no way of verifying if the questions asked and the people interviewed were heavily biased to favor one outcome over another? (Such as in the recent large discrepancies of the 8% vs. 24% use of Linux as a server results that we've seen on Slashdot recently).

Kusnetzky:

I believe that I've already covered this area in previous answers. It is clear that IDC's server operating environments data is being compared to another research firm's server adoption data. This comparison really isn't valid for several reasons including the fact that supply-side research is being compared to demand-side research and the fact that software research is being compared to hardware research.

IDC's extensive hardware research shows that Linux only holds a small share of the market when one examines shipments of servers and then segments it by the operating system which was installed at the factory. IDC's software research is showing that Linux server software is being installed on both older and new systems and that the configurations being used as servers include PCs, workstations, appliance servers, and more traditional server configurations.

8) What about the so-called "third world"?
by Kareem Abdul-Lamarr

Do these analyses factor in the so-called third world? Most of these analyses are US-centric or some times do include the continent across the pond but what about Africa and Asia? Do these analyses *really* take inputs from these continents?

Kusnetzky:

At this point, IDC has offices in 43 countries. IDC's software research team is represented in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. IDC's operating environments research included revenue and shipment data from over 140 different Linux distributions, and we have collaborative input from analysts in geographic areas around the world. I think that this means that the answer is yes, IDC is examining operating environment revenue and shipment data worldwide.

9) Who Keeps track of the Predictions
by dmccarty

I have a question on the area of predictions in general. For example, fellow IDC analyst Jill House has been severaly negative on Palm over the years, with regard to the Win CE operating system and devices. A sample quote from her in Feb. 2000 read, "If I was Palm, I would be beside myself with panic."

The issue is, that over the last 3 - 4 years she's been predicting the demise of Palm and the rise of Win CE, a claim that has never materialized. Who verifies the reliability of these predictions and keeps the analysts accountable. With the frequent sound bytes and one-liners that they give to the press, these analysts have significant influence over public perception of the issues. But how is policing done when the analysts don't analyze very well?

Kusnetzky:

I really can't speak to this issue directly. Jill is not part of the software research group.

I know that a prominent part of the software research group's annual forecast and analysis reports for each software market is reviewing last year's forecast, how close it came to this year's findings. If the findings differ from last year's forecast, the analyst(s) attempt to determine what changed and why. I'm told by subscribers that this analysis is often is very helpful.

10) Re:Question(ADDNUM)
by HeUnique

I just remembered an Idea that a friend of mine suggested:

What if IDC could work with the Linux distributions (RedHat, Mandrake, SuSE, TurboLinux, Debian) to add a small program which will run after the first internet connection has been succsessfull..

When this program runs - it will ask the user to "register" his copy of the distribution. If it has been purchased from one of the distributors then the user can add his serial number. Some other questions like will this distribution be used as a server, a workstation, or combination of the 2, or a development workstation. The survey SHOULD be anonymous (unless the user wants to give some details about himself)

By that way - the distributors can give the numbers back to IDC - and IDC can publish a report which will tell that the number of Linux installations - and that number is X. X is combined of Y free download version and Z purchased copies of Linux.

What do you think, Dan? (And what do Slashdot readers think about it?)

Kusnetzky:

I agree this would be interesting information. I don't believe that this would be a good business for IDC to be in. Our analysis is that many users of Linux don't want their organizations or their competitors knowing what they're running. They'd rather get kudos for a job well done than criticism for how they got the job done. Not only that, but some vendors that have added features to track activations have also faced a great deal of criticism. I doubt that Linux users would appreciate such tracking operations.

How many people run Linux as a desktop OS? How many servers run Linux? Is the Linux server market share 8.6 percent or 24 percent or somewhere in between? Dan Kusnetzky is a heavily quoted analyst at IDC who wrestles with questions like these for a living. This is your chance to find out how analysts come up with all those numbers -- and why analysts seem to disagree with each other so often. One question per post, please. We'll send 10 of the highest-moderated ones to Dan, and post his answers as soon as we get them back.

spizkapa writes: "IDC has predicted that Linux will grow steadily along with Microsoft in the near future in the home PC (client) market, as well as including numbers that prove Linux's acceptance rate is fantastic. " The numbers look nice, especially in the server area, but it's too bad that things weren't broken down more. I'm also wondering where *BSD fits in -- I assume under UNIX, but it's unfortunate that they weren't broken out separately.

NakNomik writes "IDC says "Other Operating Environments Will Have Trouble Keeping up with Linux's Growth" in its first ever forecast release about Linux. Read the release document over here. " Well, it's nice to see more people paying attention. And IDC gets the attention of the PHBs-for better or for worse.

NakNomik writes "IDC says "Other Operating Environments Will Have Trouble Keeping up with Linux's Growth" in its first ever forecast release about Linux. Read the release document over here. " Well, it's nice to see more people paying attention. And IDC gets the attention of the PHBs-for better or for worse.