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According to IDC, in the 4th quarter of 2010 Oracle/Sun had $883 million in server hardware revenue. Thus, on a quarter-to-quarter basis, Oracle was down substantially in the 1st quarter of 2011 (to $773 million). Oracle had what's called an "easy compare" -- very easy. I'd really like to see the unit shipment numbers, though, because I strongly suspect Oracle had to raise unit prices substantially to even make that $773M.

IDC also reports that IBM's System z mainframe hardware (only) revenue was $1.0 billion in the first quarter of 2011. From IDC's report it seems that counts only the z/OS machines and not the mainframes running other operating systems (e.g. Linux). Year over year, the IBM mainframe grew the fastest of any server type, up 41.1%. In other words, IBM's mainframe hardware business alone was about one third larger than Oracle's entire hardware business. Impressive and not impressive, respectively. I think IBM is more or less the Apple of the server industry, the only one left doing any substantial R&D and concentrating on qualities of service, which helps to explain why IBM mainframes contain 5.2 GHz CPUs, for example, when nobody else can get into the 4's. (Mainframe folks used to have to explain clock speed discrepancies, with justification. Now they don't even need to do that.) Sun used to be a big innovator, but, very sadly, that was long, long ago.

According to IDC, in the 4th quarter of 2010 Oracle/Sun had $883 million in server hardware revenue. Thus, on a quarter-to-quarter basis, Oracle was down substantially in the 1st quarter of 2011 (to $773 million). Oracle had what's called an "easy compare" -- very easy. I'd really like to see the unit shipment numbers, though, because I strongly suspect Oracle had to raise unit prices substantially to even make that $773M.

IDC also reports that IBM's System z mainframe hardware (only) revenue was $1.0 billion in the first quarter of 2011. From IDC's report it seems that counts only the z/OS machines and not the mainframes running other operating systems (e.g. Linux). Year over year, the IBM mainframe grew the fastest of any server type, up 41.1%. In other words, IBM's mainframe hardware business alone was about one third larger than Oracle's entire hardware business. Impressive and not impressive, respectively. I think IBM is more or less the Apple of the server industry, the only one left doing any substantial R&D and concentrating on qualities of service, which helps to explain why IBM mainframes contain 5.2 GHz CPUs, for example, when nobody else can get into the 4's. (Mainframe folks used to have to explain clock speed discrepancies, with justification. Now they don't even need to do that.) Sun used to be a big innovator, but, very sadly, that was long, long ago.

In response to the market shift caused by the introduction of the media tablet form factor this year, IDC expects the mini notebook category to continue growing but at a somewhat slower pace. Worldwide mini notebook shipments are forecast to be 37.8 million units in 2010, up 10.3% from 2009. Over the next four years, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the worldwide mini notebook market will be 4.3%, topping out at 42.4 million units shipped in 2014.

I don't pay a lot of attention to IDC's forecasts. In mid 2010 IDC gave an authoritative forecast of 7.6M tablets sold worldwide for 2010. http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS22345010 They completely missed that. Why should they be any more accurate on the Windows phone (or anything else for that matter?)

here.

All that is is missing is the Microsoft PR logo, like the one Gartner forgot to remove from one of their "reports" that MS paid for.

From their "estimates" it appears that the Win Phone 7 will have to rise in marketshare as fast as the Symbian will drop. Not much chance of that happening since the WinP7 market share is reported on March 8th as "taking a dive": http://vista.blorge.com/2011/03/08/microsofts-windows-phone-7-market-share-takes-a-dive/

73% in Q4, 83% for the year.. That's based on "shipped", not sold to consumers. Samsung did a lot of channel stuffing and won't release numbers on how many were actually sold. Additionally, the galaxy tab had a 16% return rate (vs 2% for the iPad).

the only company that has 'bet the farm' on android is HTC and Google

Think some more, HTC has Windows phones too. Oh, I see you say "that HTC at one time was a developer of MS phones". Well they still are.

It may be that the best way for MS to gain market share is to scare phone makes into not using Android.

The same tactics MS uses against Linux. But it is failing. More and more people and entities are switching to Linux and FOSS on desktops. It's servers where MS is gaining ground. Both Linux and MS Windows gained marketshare for servers.

Of course the problem with the numbers, whether from IDC or someone else, is that no one can know just how many servers are running Linux. Linux doesn't need to be activated or registered whereas Windows does. Company X may buy new Windows servers but after they're setup in the server room the admins may rip out all the software and install Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. Or LAMP can be installed on older hardware.

Falcon

My sentence was poorly written. You're right, instead of majority, I should have said "a lot".

So yes, you're correct, it is not a majority. But in this space...is there really a majority?

No, there is not a majority share holder in the global cell phone market. But if we're going with 3% share for the iPhone, then for every person who chose the iPhone, there are 12 who chose Nokia, 7 who went Samsung, 3 for LG, 1.5 for Rimm, 1.5 for Ericsson, and 7 who chose "other". Q1 2010 citation.

Apple has great PR and marketing, but they are still a marginal player in the overall cell phone market.

They're not entering, but they haven't really done great in the smartphone market thus far. The Blackjack reception was lackluster. Here is the closest thing to official smartphone marketshare numbers, and it puts Samsung in 5th with 3.5% of the market, which is pretty low especially compared to their popularity in the general cellphone market.

Where do you get the iPhone has a large market share? The latest numbers from IDC suggest Apple has about 17% market share in the smartphone market. In the entire phone market, they're probably not even in the double digits.

Windows (which was never a niche, as another commenter points out)

Sure it was. What's the first version of Windows you bought? If it was 3.0 or later, you're just another mainstream johnny-come-lately. Before that, Microsoft had to literally give it away, by bundling a "run-time" version of it with apps like PageMaker, which were themselves only used by a small segment of the PC-using market. I don't often play the Old-Timer card (because it requires me to point out that I was born during the Johnson administration)*, but I clearly remember when Windows was a niche operating environment, and if you don't... either you're not old enough to know what you're talking about, or... you don't know what you're talking about for other reasons.

(Citation for approaching double-digit share?)

Gartner puts them at 8.8% for 2009Q03, up 8.6% from 2008Q03. IDC puts them at 9.4%. Dell and HP lead Apple comfortably, and Acer/Gateway is still out of its reach, but Apple has lately surpassed Toshiba (and any other PC vendor) in unit sales in the US. If Win7 turns out to be less of a turkey than Vista, and people turn back to PCs with Windows, that could easily deny Apple an actual 10% market share, but the historical delta is on Apple's side: they are approaching 10%.

Either Amiga users can say they're cool and thinking different by not using Windows or a Mac - or I as a Windows user can make joke about the few Mac users and how little it's used compared to Windows.

Actually both are permissible; you're welcome to be as uninformed and in denial or reality as you want to be. It's a free world, after all. :)

*Lyndon, not Andrew

Personal Computer companies: Many
Enterprise Server companies: Many

Apple's share of 'Personal Computer' space: Around 8%
z/OS share of 'Enterprise Server' space: 9%

You can't compare some extremely broad class like 'Personal Computers' with an extremely narrow class like 'z/OS systems'. When you compare similar things you will find there is no difference at all. Look hard and you'll see that.

IBM was accused of doing those things in the 50s and 60s. In the 70s, 80s, and early 90s they had plenty of competition in the mainframe market (Hitachi, Amdahl, Fujitsu, etc). By the early 90s the mainframe market was being seriously eroded by competition from other platforms. IBM responded by completely revamping their mainframe line (switching from bi-polar to CMOS technology), which allowed them to drop the price significantly, and remain competitive in the overall server market. The other manufacturers either did not want to make the investment in changing technology, did not want to drop their prices, or bought into the 'mainframe is dead' hype and exited the market.

According to IDC, non-x86 IBM systems (including z and Power) account for 43% of the non-x86 server market. IBM systems running z/OS (which this suit is about) account for just 9% of the server market, hardly what could be a monopoly.

Complaining that IBM has a monopoly on the System z market is about the same as complaining that Coca-Cola has a monopoly on the 'Diet Coke' market.

Do you really believe that invention and improvement have been 'killed off' in the server market? Even if you restrict that statement to your narrow 'mainframe' definition, are you really saying that the mainframes IBM makes today are the same as the ones they were making 15 years (or even 2 years) ago?

IBM is not abusing any position here, they are simply refusing to provide competitors with the gun to shoot them with. Any sane business (or person) would do the same.

Seems like the next anti-trust lawsuit.

I doubt it.

The only possible anti-trust issue is if IBM is suspected of "anti-competitive practices that tend to lead to such a dominant position".

Considering IBM still has some stiff competition from HP and there are other smaller competitors in the market it doesn't appear they are at risk of any other anti-trust abuses.

I wouldn't let my guard down with any corporation, but I don't see any signs yet of IBM violating anti-trust laws or acting in an anti-competitive manner. In fact this looks like down right brutal competition.

Is 160GB really not enough storage? Is a gigabyte of ram really not enough memory? Is a 1.6GHz multithreading processor really not powerful enough for surfing the web, chatting on IM, and listening to MP3s?

I think you're wrong, and I'm not alone. According to IDC, netbooks made up 20% of total portable computer sales in Europe in 2008. Further, Taiwan-based Market Intelligence Centre said that shipments will more than double to 18.3 million in 2009, an annual growth rate of 128 per cent.

What you get out of a netbook that you don't get out of your solution is the same thing you get for buying a Cavalier instead of a Ferrari: A functional device at a fraction of the cost. The fact that they're inexpensive is why they're taking off, and why they're going to be relatively recession-proof. Even better, they're cheap enough that even if it breaks or gets stolen, you can just go buy another one. Netbooks can be had for as little as $250 new. Good luck even getting a good cell phone for that much.

I can see it first-hand. Two of my three brothers own netbooks(The third bought a full-fledged desktop replacement because his PC died), my dad owns TWO(owned an eee, now owns an Aspire One), I own one too. We've all wanted laptops for quite some time, but they were too expensive to justify. At 200-300 dollars, they're not too expensive at all.

Wouldn't it be even funnier if they weren't a monopoly?

By your logic Microsoft is not a monopoly either.

I don't know what the GP's threshold for monopoly status is, but it's apparent he thinks it's more than 59% market share. You are the one with faulty logic to then reason that because he doesn't think 59% is enough that he must not think 89% is enough.

• Windows: 36.5% (up 1.7%)
• Unix: 32.7% (up 7.7%)
• Linux: 13.4% (up 4%)

Source IDC: Q2 2008 Server Market Growth

To me, this suggests that Windows is the SLOWEST growing market and Linux will overcome Microsoft as increases in growth will be exponential over the next 3 years! Now, the commercial-Unix is undoubtedly using GNU components, so I would even lump Unix and Linux in together... That would give *nix a 46.1% market share over the MS 36.5% share! (with 7 times the growth, 11.7%!) These numbers are from sales, ie Capitalism not Communism. Just because we believe in the free exchange of ideas and software, does not mean we don't get paid. After all, nothing is more American then the free exchange of ideas.

I never said Microsoft was a marketplace failure. I only pointed out that Microsoft is susceptible to the same flaws, has longer patch times and has launched marketing campaigns that lie to consumers because of their own deployment problems (Mojave). Do you contest any of these points? I don't recall any major marketing campaign against Vista, why did MS need to bait people into a room and show them "Mojave?" (Because in real-world application, Vista sucks donkey-balls!)

And while you are thinking over your obviously defeated point-of-view, why don't you share the source of that fabricated 0.85% Linux market share number with the class.

According to Gartner's latest numbers, Apple had 6.6% of USA sales in Q1 2008, up from 5.2% in Q1 2007. IDC says Apple has 6% USA market share, up from 4.9%.

Apple's worldwide market share wasn't listed because they weren't in the top 5, but it's less than 4.4% (Toshiba's worldwide share).

Don't you find it funny that a paper about Open Source costs $4500?

But it just may be slowing it down:

• Windows server revenue grows FASTER than Linux
• Linux servers lose market share year over year

For the 80% of "easy" cases where browsing/e-mail/word-processing are the important functions, there are several reasons to migrate:

• they can run 2007 software on machines that run stuff released in 2001 or earlier and cannot run Vista
• migration is relatively easy, see Jessimyn Installs Ubuntu (great fun)
• they can create pdfs
• they can be relatively free of malware
• they can pay what it costs to install the software instead of what the monopoly in the desktop market demands
• often, installing Linux is easier than installing/delousing that other OS
• even if they have never seen/heard "Linux" they can learn about it while researching problems with malware, the IT industry, headlines about anti-competion cases against M$, even the 10-Q or Analyst Meetings of M$ or just watching TV. Linux has been in the news one way or another heavily since about 2000. In 2000 when I did that, I read that Linux was hard to install but Caldera's installer was one of the easiest to use.
• before 2004 I had only met one person who was aware of Linux. Recently a much larger rate of familiarity exists even in persons who have never seen Linux. e.g. a high percentage of businesses use Linux on servers at work and a smaller fraction have examined FLOSS on the desktop and even Linux on the desktop see IDC survey presented at LinuxWolrd Summit 2006

So, the reality is that Linux on the desktop is growing at 20% per annum in the commercial market which lags the personal/free market by a large margin. M$ had to cut its price to $3 just to stay competitive. That is all Linux needs, to be allowed to compete on price and performance. For years, M$ has had a free ride. That is soon stopping. Get used to it. It is doubtful that Linux will KO M$ because some will always want to pay too much or be swayed by sales campaigns , but M$ will fall into the pack with realistic prices and market shares. Remember the glory days of the Soviet Union, when every election resulted in the landslide for a single candidate of the party's choosing? Those days are gone forever in Russia and they will soon be gone for M$.

So, the reality is that Linux on the desktop is growing at 20% per annum in the commercial market which lags the personal/free market by a large margin. M$ had to cut its price to $3 just to stay competitive. That is all Linux needs, to be allowed to compete on price and performance. For years, M$ has had a free ride. That is soon stopping. Get used to it. It is doubtful that Linux will KO M$ because some will always want to pay too much or be swayed by sales campaigns , but M$ will fall into the pack with realistic prices and market shares. Remember the glory days of the Soviet Union, when every election resulted in the landslide for a single candidate of the party's choosing? Those days are gone forever in Russia and they will soon be gone for M$.

Want objectivity? Okay, since you asked. Please refer to the many links in this post.

Also, if anything is a "troll" it's the original article. Drawing Conclusions about OS sales based on browser stats is idiotic - if not dishonest. And the methodology used is even more idiotic - or more dishonest.

Please note: this IDC data is for product shipments, the article is about browser stats. Which would you trust more?

The charts for the IDC data can be found here:
http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comme nts/idc_apple_mac_grabbed_56_of_us_market_share_in _q2_07/

More links for the IDC report.
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/ 14313/
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2160333,00.as p

Or since you have $4500 in spare change, go buy the real thing: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=207308

Or maybe this article is a well timed bit of smoke screen, designed to try to hide: "Microsoft Xbox 360 Sales Plunge 60% As Problems Mount"

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jh tml?articleID=201200157

OK, when you're telling me that something is completely untrue about the stock markets you can at least check the charts.

Microsoft has been consistently between ~$21 & ~$30 for the last 3 years or so. Since mid-November in 2006 they've covered that entire ground (from 21 to 30+), which means that their market cap is up. So I seriously question your "bottom line" comments b/c MS doen't seem to be suffering that much. Windows Server usage is actually moving up. And home Windows usage is likely moving sideway to "slightly" down as usual. (which is irrelevant b/c, let's face it, when you have more than 90% share in a competitive market, you basically have to go down)

So basically you managed to spout a bunch of opinions with no research and a complete failure to counter anything I've mentioned. You may believe that these flaws are impacting the bottom line of the MS OS division, but if you can't bother to at least do a Google and look up stock prices then you're just spouting fumes.

You're also not making any counters to my SAP comments. You got all in a huff about MS, but you didn't give me one good reason why a giant like SAP should be paying for security flaws. You've done nothing to help improve my understanding of reality (or anyone else's), you've done nothing to clarify the situation or attempt to even correctly grasp the problem.

So, in light of that, I think paying for flaws is actually a very good idea.

Clearly I did too, I was trying to tell you why it's not happening and you didn't listen.

Should Linux and Mac sales have also doubled?

Um they have, but in the last couple months, not over 6 years ago sales figures..

Mac sales... From the financual page..
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=AAPL&annual

Income Sept 30 2006 19,315,000 All numbers in thousands.
Income Sept 24 2005 13,931,000
Income Sept 25 2004 8,279,000

In two years from 2004 to 2006 the income went from 8 Billion to 19 Billion. It's not all iPod and iTunes sales.

Picking just one Lunux distro which is popular..
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=2276320

Since there isn't any real sales figures, I thought I would go to see if the online chatter is increasing. The Ubuntu forum is growing rapidly. "We register over 14,000 new accounts each month"

If you want a pretty graph of Linux installed base from 2000-2006, take a look here.
http://linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/6065/1/ screenshot3524/

A casual glance seems to indicate more than a doubling of the 2000 installed base figure.

Here is what a market analist has to say;
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS2014 7206

"IDC offers the following recommendations for services providers:

Open source will become business as usual in two to three years, so act today and create direct open source services offerings and embed open source in your solutions where you can"

and

"The study also reveals that open source is moving up on the investment agenda of companies worldwide, as services providers (mostly services arms of technology companies) have formalized support, training, and certification services to encourage adoption of open source (principally Linux) on their products. As open source software goes mainstream, IDC finds that services vendors must further develop open source capabilities in order to meet their clients' needs and attract new customers."

None of these reports is faultless, and they measure different things from what the parent article measures. But there seems to be no crisis for Microsoft for the time being.

I'm with Recovering Hater on this.

This IDC data for (hardware) servers shipped in 2Q06 shows that servers with Linux installed drove $1.5B in spendng in 2Q06 ( a 12% share of all spending on servers in the quarter. FWIW, Servers with Unix installed represented 35% of spending. Apple isn't mentioned in the vendor listing, but may be in the full report.

Now, if you look here at Apple's quarterly report ending April 1, 2006 and go to pg. 28, you'll find that Apple made $833Mil in a category called 'Desktops' that includes iMac, eMac, Mac mini, Power Mac and Xserve product Lines.

So, even if we imagine that all of the Apple 'Desktop' category would compete against the $1.5B server hardware spending on Linux, you'd still find that Apple has a long way to go.

A would like to point out that you can buy very useful documents from the IDC through Amazon. For instance, this 10 page PDF entitled Attacking Application Infrastructure Configuration Complexity can be downloaded for a mere $3,500.00 USD. Yeah, there's around 8600 over priced market forecasts and analyses available on Amazon.

If you're looking for a 1 page PDF with romance, adventure & a criticism of day to day life through the eyes of an electronic device, check out the IDC's No PSP for the Holidays for a mere $750.00 USD. As you can see by the customer comments, this is a very satisfying purchase.

Does anyone actually pay this much money for these? If they do, how can they be sure that IDC knows the future?

Assuming the IDC does know what it's talking about, I find their analysis of mobile operating systems to be the most interesting. This is an area of OSs (or real time OSs) where Microsoft is losing footing. Symbian seems to be increasingly dominating that market with Microsoft & Linux neck and neck. By the way, don't bother to pay the $3500 USD for that article, the press release will suffice.

With the IDC also predicting mobile device sales to skyrocket, what does this tell you about Linux? Maybe Linux has lost the desktop war but it doesn't matter because the future is filled with concentrations on extremely small mobile devices and the servers that they connect to?

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS2007 4406

here it is:
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS2007 4406

from TFPR(TF press release): Vendor Q4 2005, Revenue Market, Share Q4 2004, Revenue Market, Share Revenue Growth, 4Q05/4Q04
IBM--- $5,555--- 38.4%--- $5,510--- 38.0%--- 0.8%
Hewlett-Packard--- $3,885--- 26.8%--- $3,745--- 25.8%--- 3.8%
Dell--- $1,390--- 9.6%--- $1,295--- 8.9%--- 7.3%
Sun Microsystems--- $1,185--- 8.2%--- $1,330--- 9.2%--- -10.9%
Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens--- $606--- 4.2%--- $680--- 4.7%--- -10.9%
Others--- $1,857--- 12.8%--- $1,952--- 13.5%--- -4.9%
All Vendors--- $14,478--- 100.0%--- $14,512--- 100.0%--- -0.2%

I don't think they take the number of units sold into account...

PS: not good formatting, I know

I have not RTFA, but I would guess the reason MS beat Unix is because Linux is picking up. I'm curious how much of this is real 'gain' for MS, vs Unix 'loss'.

I have RTFA, and it's difficult (maybe impossible) to test your hypothesis from the numbers in the press release.

But from this related document I can do a back of the envelope estimate of growth for 2005 in absolute dollar terms:

Windows: $17.7 billion * (1-.047) * 4.7% = +$0.79 billion

Linux: $5.7 billion * (1-.208) * 20.8% = +$0.94 billion

Unix: $17.5 billion * (1+.059) * -.059% = -$1.09 billion

The middle term is to estimate the 2004 revenue figures from the 2005 figures. The estimate (a major caveat) is that I use the 4Q05/4Q04 growth rate (in %/year) instead of the 2005/2004 growth rate, since, if I understand correctly, the former figure is the only one they give to us.

Anyway, it really does look like the decline in Unix server revenue is due more to replacement by Linux than to replacement by Windows. That said, Windows had quite a healthy growth rate, so Microsoft really is doing well for itself in this area.

While both the BSA and IDC might well have a conflict of interest with regard to the surveys outcome, no secret has been made of their methodology and the conclusions are, IMO hardly controversial.

The notion that copyright infringement damages the prospects of companies that write software and therefore the employment prospects of programmers (oops, there's my conflict of interest) strikes me as perfectly reasonable. This does not, of course prevent me from being paying close and paranoid attention to the methods of enforcement advocated by the BSA.

Actually the Apache install base is not a good measure of the linux install base. Netcraft at one time tracked operating systems but they stopped sometime in 2001.

However, the older Netcraft surveys do suggest a significant linux presence and the author of the NBR article is misrepresenting the article to which he references.

Based on old Netcraft surveys linux likely has around a 30% market share in web servers and Windows has around 50%. That is far from tiny and insignificant and based on information from the report to which the NBR article refers I suspect that linux market share may be increasing.

http://survey.netcraft.com/index-200106.html

And for anyone who actualy reads the IDC article to which the NBR tripe refers they will discover that while linux only holds 11.5% of quarterly revenues for servers shipped from large system builders, which again is not tiny and insignificant, the growth of linux revenue and shipments is 3 to 4 times that of Windows. So with Windows server revenue at $12 billion and linux revenue at $1 billion and 3 to 4 times the growth it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that linux is going to eat somebodies lunch.

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS0022 3005

The author of the NBR article seems to have a preconcieved notion of the world around him and even when he reads contradictory facts he maintains his illusion.

burnin

Plus did I mention that sun has about 40% of the Unix server market, which if I'm not mistaken is about four times the size of the Linux server market?

They're probably looking at the market in terms of revenue, instead of the number of installed seats.

At about $3.5 million for a 72 processor E25K from Sun, it takes a lot of dual processor Xeon sales to catch up.

According to IDC (http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS001 53905) the revenue in Q1 2005 was about $4.2 billion each for Unix and Windows servers (the first time Windows has pulled even with Unix), and $1.2 billion for Linux server.

So the Unix and Windows markets in terms of server revenue are each currently about 3.5 times the size of the Linux market (based on Q1 2005).

It's interesting to note that Linux unit shipments increased 31.1% in the quarter compared to 2004. Windows unit shipments increased 10.7% in the same period.

-cjs

Uh, interesting way to spin the original press release, which prominently highlights 35 percent revenue growth for Linux, 12 percent Windows, 3 percent "Unix," which should really be called "Other Unix."

Granted, the Linux server $1.2 billion factory revenue is less than a third of the Unix and less than a third of the Windows market, but hardly insignificant. Also much harder to trace, I reckon, given how many people strip Windows off a Dell and make a Linux server with a spare copy of Debian.

I only know enough to defend Sun (I won't stand up for Carly or Bill, sorry). Sun are #1 now in lots of sectors: UNIX (Solaris), Linux (SE Asia), HPC units shipped (Opteron), 64-bit (SPARC and Opteron), price (JDS, JES, Solaris/Linux), and others.

As an Anonymous Coward in this thread pointed out, this is factually inaccurate in at least some respects, and irrelevant in others. For example, Sun is not #1 in Unix, at least as measured by their share of the worldwide server market. This report from February of this year, says they are number 3, behind IBM and HP. Also, according to the same report, HP, IBM, and Dell were numbers 1, 2, and 3 in Linux server revenue. Furthermore, Since IBM and HP both ship (exclusively) 64-bit Unix servers, Sun is, by definition, #3 in 64-bit.

Factual errors aside, Java still appears to be a long-lasting strong play for Sun. Financially, their current stock valuation appears reasonable, at something like 1/15th of what it was in 2000; a much more sustainable position, and one that reflects much less crack smoking by the investment community. I'd say they have some legs left in them.

OK, I learned some math. Here's a little math lesson.

Inelastic goods tend to have a lump sum, or flat tax (as opposed to a flat rate tax). Cigarettes, in every state in the US, are taxed by the pack. And guess what, gasoline? Taxed by the gallon And holy crap, look at this, I'm looking at my SBC local phone bill right now, and the tax is charged by the line. A portion of my long distance tax charges is actually done as a percentage, but guess what, they're changing that to a flat rate, too. And hang on, I've got my Adelphia broadband bill here, and it's got a flat rate monthly tax too!

So in your example, where they sell twice as much at 1/3 the price, tax revenue would be exactly... twice as much. So I'm looking forward to the second insallment of your math lesson where you contue to explain how I'm such an idiot for thinking that if people buy more of these things, the tax revenue will increase, and enlighten me as to how it will "definitely be less." Of course, without knowing the supply and demand curves, you can't know if it would be more or less even if it were a percentage tax, and in almost all cases, you're wrong, because total sales almost always increase when prices drop. But that's another story.

So, instead of spending $50 on a private ISP, if they spend $25 of their taxes on "free" government service

Try supposing it's $100 for the government's service, and that it ends up going out all the time, being a fifth the speed of the $50 private service, and if you think tech support is lousy these days, imagine having to drive somewhere and stand in line for 5 hours just to have them tell you they don't care and won't help.

According to IDC, 5 million americans have a wifi card now. That's about 1.6% of the population. Of course, not all of those are 802.11 b to work with these networks, but let's round up in the government's favor. Philadelpia, the first US city to try this, has a population of about 1.5 million. Philadelpia's spending $10 million on setup and expects operating costs of $1.5 million. Thus, if Philadelphians own wireless cards at about an average rate, then about 24,000 of them have cards. So for the first year, they're spending $458 of tax money per resident who could even possibly try to make use of the service. Of course, this is just to put one wireless hub on each block; what pecent of people do you think could actually get service without leaving thier home? Our 802.11 hub only reaches some rooms in our house, and it's base station is right here. The people installing the networks admit that the base stations only reach about 100 feet, and that's when they aren't going through brick walls. So I wouldn't be surprised if their first year cost is closer to $4,000 per regular user. But other people will be paying that money, instead of them paying $50 for their own access, so it's good, right? Of course, more people will buy 802.11 cards in the future if there's "free" broadband available, so the numbers should improve, if the government can keep program costs under control.

Just out of curiosity, do you think those 24,000 out of 1,500,000 who have computers with 802.11 are among the poor? How many do you think have incomes at least two standard deviations above the mean? You do realize this is a tax on everyone, including the poor, to provide services overwhelmingly consumed by the rich, so they don't have to pay the fee themselves?

"So, instead of spending $50 on a private ISP, if they spend $25 of their taxes on "free" government service, they would have mo

An interesting fact, as I noted in another thread, is that combined Unix+Linux marketshare seems to be increasing.

"Unix server revenues were $5.2 billion in the quarter, increasing 2.7% year over year against a difficult compare for 4Q03."

"Additionally, on a sequential basis, Unix servers grew dramatically in 4Q04, add ing more than $1 billion in quarterly revenue."

"Linux servers generated $1.3 billion in quarterly revenue, representing 9.0% of worldwide server revenue."

"Overall, Linux server revenue grew 35.6% year over year"

"factory revenue in the worldwide server market grew 5.1% to $14.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2004"

"For the full year 2004, worldwide server revenue grew 6.2% to $49.0 billion"

So...

Unix in 4Q03 was 5059.6 million.
Linux in 4Q03 was 837.2 million.
Total market in 4Q03 was 13717 million.
Unix/Linux marketshare was 42%

Unix in 4Q04 was 5200 million.
Linux in 4Q04 was 1300 million.
Total market in 4Q04 was 14420 million.
Unix/Linux marketshare was 45%

Here's the original IDC report which has a somewhat more organized picture as well as more data.

Was it just me or did everyone else notice that IDC wants to charge $2,000 to read their 20 page document on how linux is mainstream?? http://www.idc.com/research/viewtoc.jsp?containerI d=32424

Whenever I see words like forecast and prediction buried, I wonder what the motivation of the writer is. I dug around a very little bit and found this link to an IDC ress release that this is based on (I think). IDC - Press Release http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=pr2004_1 1_02_093312 Reading the press release, I could only think to myself "uhm, duh, who couldn't see that coming." I do wonder how they came up with the time frame though. Four years seems like a long time to predict anything in the IT business with any accuracy.

http://www.gartner.com/
http://www.metagroup.com/
http://www.idc.com/
http://www.forrester.com/
http://www.idg.com/
http://www.jupiterresearch.com/
http://www.yankeegroup.com/
http://www.aberdeen.com/
http://www.amrresearch.com/

And yes, they all cost money. If you're an enterprise and you want input on how to spend you tens-of-thousands to multi-million-dollar IT budget, you can shell out a few more dollars to get some research.

One:
Sorry but Apple is talking about Mac users, not individual machines sold, it is clear enough (they said "users"). There were more than 25 millions Macs sold since 1984, they sold 800,000 of them just last quarter. So then are you implying they made that number up from nothing?

Yes I shouldn't have been affirmative with that 7.8% number, and the 320 millions number could be inflated too (that's Microsoft we are talking about, convicted many times in court)

As for a link go to http://www.apple.com/myths/ and have fun, but I guess in your mind Apple is always lying while Merril Lynch never does...

Two:
Yes you are spreading false ideas... you didn't say "according to a report I read from Merril Lynch, computers sold by Apple only make up less 2% of the market for the last quarter of '03". What you said is: "5%? Apple's marketshare is currently below 2%." with a link to a very short and crippled Yahoo article that explains just about nothing on what those number means. (sold share vs installed base)

Most people reading your post may take this number as face value, and think that less than 2% of computer users are using Macs because you have a link to yahoo to back you up (most won't even check the content of the link, but (un)fortunatelly you put [yahoo.com] after the link, so that people will believe you even without visiting.)

Also these numbers are from last year, go to http://idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=pr2004_07_14 _153325 to see that Apple sold 3.7% of computers in Q1 2004 and ranked 5th among the computer makers. It includes preliminary numbers for Q2 2004 and it seems that Apple is not in the first 5 (so it's was lower than 3.2%). But the last comfirmed number is 3.7%

Still clearly you are emotionally attached to the less than 2% number and won't let go, I guess you repeat it too often to you friends that have 4 or 5 Macs.

Well, looking at the numbers here, it would appear to me that "free" servers don't show up anywhere.

"Servers based on the Linux operating system will have comparable market share numbers in 2008, representing approximately 29% of all server unit shipments and about $9.7 billion in revenues. Microsoft Windows-based servers are expected to capture 60% of all server unit shipments in 2008 and represent the largest server operating environment in terms of revenues with $22.7 billion."

Corrected for market sizes, the average Windows server brings in 13% more revenue than a Linux server. This is not TCO numbers, these are revenue figures. Does that seem right to you? No, these figures only include servers with commercial support, such as Red Hat's server program. The dollar figures may be right, but the server figures are way off. Including free servers, there are many more Linux servers, and the average revenue is much lower.

Kjella

OK, I'm talking to a guy who will nitpick Google's 1% to death

Why do you feel the need to exaggerate to make a point? I didn't "nitpick" to death, I just noted that I don't feel that Google's Zeitgeist is an accurate representation of Market Share.

but then thinks it's perfectly OK throw out a number like "2.5%" with no source whatsoever and then claim it's "generally accepted"

Is IDC a good enough source for you? This , by Paul Thurrott no less, gives a 2.3% market share in 2002. Are you going to call IDC a dubious source, and Thurrott an irrational Linux zealot as well? Oh, and those are desktop figures, according to the article.

But wait a minute - it seems I was too conservative in my assessment: for 2003, IDC gives Linux on the desktop 2.8 percent, not 2.5!

You see, contrary to what your knee-jerk reaction has led you to believe, I didn't start by saying: "Google Zeitgeist puts Linux at 1%? That's way too low! I'm sure I can find reasons to justify my biased views!" What really happened is that I already knew that IDC and others put Linux at approximately 2.5% of the desktop market, so when I saw Google's figures I thought "Hmmm...there seems to be a discrepancy between Google's index, which does not profess to represent accurate market share figures, and the numbers of respected research firms. I wonder what could cause that difference..."

See the problem with your argument?? Maybe, just maybe, that's why people think you are an irrational zealot.

In light of this it seems you shouldn't be so quick in calling other people zealots. You'd look less like one yourself.

By the way, right now I'm a Windows user. So please, do suck on it.

According to an article at Tekrati Industry Analyst Reporter tonight, IDC is saying Linux Server sales grew revenue at 56.9% and unit shipments at 46.4%. Also, they have a report stating Linux servers near the $1 billion mark in quarterly revenue. You can get to the IDC release off the Tekrati article or go to IDC directly.