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Just to confirm my thought:

78% of americans own a cell phone:
http://www.itfacts.biz/78-of-americans-own-cell-phones/11802

28% of american population own a passport
http://www.gyford.com/phil/writing/2003/01/31/how_many_america.php
(according to the 2008 GAO report)

IDC sells reports with comments like the following for thousands of dollars:

"Despite the dominance of the Windows platform, Linux adoption continues to grow in the region in both the COE and server operating environment (SOE) spaces," says Antony Lee, market analyst, Software Research, IDC Asia/Pacific.

...

"On the desktop side, IDC sees Linux share more than doubling, from 3% today to 6% in 2007, while Windows loses a bit of ground."

So, people who scientifically design and implement surveys reported that GNU/Linux was the size of Mac on the desktop a few years ago and it is still growing rapidly.

see this excerpt. That was from 2005. If the share was 3% then and growing rapidly, how can the NetApps share of less than 1% possibly be true unless NetApps' universe is unrepresentative? That was before Dell and ASUS jumped in.

So. There are no signs of GNU/Linux on the desktop slowing down any time soon and Chinese Linux Market

We know there are millions of GNU/Linux desktops there, because Sun made a deal to supply millions of them. see Sun story (2003)

Turbolinux is also in China in a big way. "According to the International Data Corp. (IDC), Turbolinux's market share in servers in China was 62 percent in 2004. On the desktop, it holds a 25 percent share. "

see http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=170700943 (2005)

GNU/Linux is huge in China, a country several times the population of the USA with a huge growth in GDP. Hundreds of millions there will be first time computer buyers within a few years and they are not locked-in to M$

Numbers are not too much different in the BRIC (Brazil Russia India and China). There, governments are activly promoting GNU/Linux by using it themselves, putting it into schools or insisting on open file formats.

"Sun executives were meeting with Brazilian government executives and were told in no uncertain terms that the government would not consider any technology that wasn't open source. " see www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3697166

So Brazil was the straw that broke the camel's back and caused Sun to open Java.

BRIC is 2.65 thousand million people. see http://www.xminc.com/mt/archives/000177.html Many are poor but rapidly industrializing and hungry for IT. Are they going to want a bloated OS or a lean, mean, computing machine? Do not be misled by NetApps. Unless their clients are audited and deemed to be representative of the world somehow, they must be considered way off base.

China is huge. If you look at http://google.com/trends and enter linux,windows you will see that other OS has a steady lead over time with Google. Now, zero in on China. Interesting, eh? Now, zero in on Beijing. Whoops! Where did the lead go? Beijing is a huge city and the seat of government. Stories about that other OS taking over there are overstated, even at $3 a licence.

desktop market. Since then the number of folks using Linux on the desktop has certainly increased:
http://www.itfacts.biz/linux-desktop-market-share-to-reach-6-in-2007/723

It was predicted to be 6% in 2007 and I'd wager that is pretty close.

Of course, that doesn't count Linux users like myself who purchase through the retail channel only once out of every 4 downloads, and the much larger number who only download free copies of Linux. This "0.6%" also never takes into account the fact that a single download of a Linux distro is often installed on more than one computer.

So, all this report is comparing is the retail channel sales of Mac, the only way one can get it, with the retail channel sales of Linux, which is usually the choice of last resort among Linux users.

http://www.itfacts.biz/index.php?id=P723

Meanwhile, http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php is reporting:

as of 1 October, 2007.

There are lots of PCs out there. I have seen a few '95 and '98 machines still in use (Horrors!).

The aspect that eludes M$ is that of the existing PCs, very few can run Vista. M$ plans to kill off XP next year for new licences, and upgrades of XP soon. Will the world trash hundreds of millions of working PCs, PIII and later? Why would they? The world will find Linux ready to run on them with modern software. It takes a salesman to announce a problem with the M$ empire is an advantage.

Whether it likes it or not, the world will not trash that many working PCs and M$ will have to supply a product for them or drop out. This is not like the good old days when M$ had to persuade folks to shift from 8MHz CPUs to 400MHz CPUs where they could see a real benefit. Nowadays, 3000 MHz CPUs are idling and they want folks to run dual core models that can do 200 frames per second in high resolution to read text.

Phone sales. For example, when you bought your phone in 2005, only 12% of people buying phones bought 3G phones. Source. Admittedly this particular source is referring only to WCDMA, but it makes a solid reference for the year in question. 2006 year-long (not quarterly) sales were on the order of 21-23% 3G according to a trade journal article that I can't seem to find at the moment. Lots of phones offered 3G, but consumers don't really use it, even on a worldwide scale. Here's a link from the same site referencing newer figures (though I trust this site less than my trade journals). 20% global 3G handset owners, 9% use.

Phone sales. For example, when you bought your phone in 2005, only 12% of people buying phones bought 3G phones. Source. Admittedly this particular source is referring only to WCDMA, but it makes a solid reference for the year in question. 2006 year-long (not quarterly) sales were on the order of 21-23% 3G according to a trade journal article that I can't seem to find at the moment. Lots of phones offered 3G, but consumers don't really use it, even on a worldwide scale. Here's a link from the same site referencing newer figures (though I trust this site less than my trade journals). 20% global 3G handset owners, 9% use.

In the mobile phone market, yes, Blackberry has a VERY small market share.

Mobile Phone Market Share:
Nokia: 35%
Motorola: 16%
Samsung: 12%
LG: 7.2%

Smartphones generally account for 3% of the mobile phone market. However, 25% of current American mobile phone owners would like to have a smartphone, but apparently are waiting for something. Hmmm... considering that the iPhone will work perfectly fine as a phone, and considering that it does a bunch of other *consumer* oriented stuff, like photos and movies, this is probably the market that Apple is attempting to capture, not the Blackberry suits.

Stats from:
http://www.itfacts.biz/

95% of American households have a TV.

Source: http://www.itfacts.biz/index.php?id=P6186

allow porn to expand even further onto the Internet."

Is that really possible? In all seriousness,"Internet porn is a $2.84 bln market"http://www.itfacts.biz/index.php?id=P7960 How much of paypal's success is tied up in that $2.8 bil? What about faster bandwith, or video compression, or antivirus software? Gaming certainly plays a significant part in the adoption of faster computers, I think porn might play a similar part in the relm of data transfer. We are more eager to get new toys than to work more efficiently.

To put things in perspective again, the number 5 cell phone maker shipped about ten times the number of cell phones then Apple shipped iPods. Granted, this was pre-Shuffle, but they still have a very long way to go to catch up with Nokia or Motorola.

You could not be more wrong. AMD's share of the CPU market was only 16.1 % in Q4 2004 based on unit sales and only 9% based on revenue which makes it obvious that AMD is selling more of the low-priced Semprons than they are the higher-priced Athlons. Based on those numbers, Intel is outselling AMD 88% to 9% or 9.78 to 1. As far as company-wide profits, Intel reported net income of $2.2 billion for Q1 2005 on revenues of $9.4 billion while AMD reported a loss of $17.4 million on revenues of $1.23 billion. Those are the facts and they also mesh with what you see when you go to an online computer sales website for Dell, IBM, HP, Sony, or Gateway where there's mostly Intel-inside models or when you go down to your local computer store where most of the desktops and laptops will be Intel-inside. It would be more interesting to talk about *why* no one buys the obviously-better AMD products than it is to pretend that it isn't so.

FTA: "In fall 2003, Microsoft briefly considered buying Google, only to realize that even if Brin, Page, and their board could have been persuaded to sell--which seemed unlikely--Microsoft would have been left to explain to the world why it was now running a search engine built entirely on Linux instead of Windows."

Wow, Gates hates Linux so much he won't touch a company that's using it. Microsoft didn't get into the search game because it was a money-loser. So Google grew into one of the most recognized brand names in the world, built the market into THE money maker for the future, and Superman(Microsoft) can touch Google because they're wearing Kryptonite(Linux).

Microsoft needs to pull out all the stops to win this one. It really seems too little too late, but maybe they'll use the patent system to stop them.

Paging Bradleyland...

This is no suprise. The Athlon64 on its own is generally a better performing processor than Intel's offerings. Also, its oft-touted on-die memory controller means the chip was "designed from the outset" as dual-core friendly. AMD's marketing department is apparently shoving this down every reviewer's throat.

What's making Intel look silly is not the fact that dual-core Athlons outperform dual-core Intels, but the fact that AMD has out planned Intel in the somewhat long term. Intel's short term goal of chasing GHz into oblivion is biting them in the posterior.

None of it amounts to much if AMD can't gain ground on Intel in the market. Call me when AMD's market share moves by more than 0.1% per quarter.

How about a comparison with other regions, such as the European Union? I know, some people prefer to compare the US with countries such as Luxembourg. Anyway, IT Facts reported an estimated 38M homes with broadband access by the end of 2004. They only list the "old" EU countries. Add the new members and you get a better picture.

I do not have the numbers for Japan at hand, but I could imagine that they do like broadband connections, too.

http://www.itfacts.biz/index.php?id=P2282

The cold war is over and with it has gone the rhetoric of freedom. Now we see that those who claimed there was little difference between our Federal tyrants and Soviet tyrants were correct. Compared to the real evil empire, the war on terror is a pathetic excuse for violations of liberty. Yet daily we allow and some even demand such things. The rhetoric was right and we need to remember it.

The war between free and closed software is as important a fight as we have today. Every day, people sign over their privacy for the privilege of running expensive, second rate software. Some of this software, like Macromedia Flash, turns on your microphone and grants it's owners the ability to listen in on your conversations. Others, such as M$ OS demand the ability to inspect your files. Phone tapping is trivial next to such violations because your computer is also your filing system, your post and no phones worked when hung up the way a computer microphone can.

These violations are against company and individual alike, yet the bigger dumber companies continue to be suckered into massive information leaks by promises of employee monitoring. Such is the folly of manipulative people. The same site also point out that almost half of big dumb companies monitor their employee's email, here. Want to bet that 100% of those big dumb companies use M$ on their desktops? They have no idea what's leaking out of their networks from non-free shit, spyware and malware.

that hasn't stopped approximately 1/3 of all U.S. companies from employing email monitoring tools.
Why not link to the source for your source (login)? The ITFacts.biz story got it wrong anyway: "33% of US companies monitor employees' e-mail" is wrong--the direct quote was "Almost 33 percent of 140 North American businesses..." You and ITFacts were off wrt the number and the sample. Oh, and the Tribune article was merely a syndicated column, using data from a nearly year-old study. Not exactly news. Where did I find that out? Look, it's ITFacts.biz! Yep, TFA was a double post.

Let's continue because we are not done fixing your post:
43% of those companies employ staff to check outgoing emails.
Wrong. It's "more than 43%" of companies with over 20,000 employees (not 43% of monitoring companies), according to the study. The one-third figure expands the sample to include all companies.

It is also worth noting that the study in question was sponsored by ProofPoint, which in fact sells monitoring software. So you could say that Forrester had a financial interest in high-balling the figure (which it appears they did, with all this "almost 33%" business).

Worldwide server unit shipments 6.3 mln units in 2004 vs. (749 + 876 + 836 + 1046)k = 3.507 mln Macs in 2004

Minus number of servers only used internaly = U R wR0ng.

If you'd like something more recent, I can't help you. But if you check http://www.itfacts.biz/index.php?id=C0_15_1 you should be able to find somtething.

IDC estimates that Red Hat's distributions cover over 60% of the Linux server market. From July 2003 through January 2004, Debian's 24.6% growth to 442,753 installations represented the fastest growth in that period

information is only a google away.

According to CNET Linux had 27% of all server shipments in 2000 up from 25% the previous year.

IT facts says 'Linux server revenues grew 54.6% in Q2 2004 and unit shipments jumped more than 61% while Windows server revenue grew 13.2% and unit shipments up 25.3%.

If you paid attention at the link, 41% is how many forgot to send in rebates, amongst all those that didn't get rebates. The relevant amount you ought to have quoted (though it isn't as prominently place in the title) is, "Half of consumers never even try to get the rebates."

Oh, you want sources, do you?

How about this:

The same source, but more current

Look at that, the same people a year later, still making rosy projections for linux, but considerably less rosy, since OS X pulled away from Linux, and Linux was down to 1% by then.

OS X market share was almost triple that of Linux in 2004, and if sales of the mini are anything to go by, that gap is only going to widen.

It's very easy to find sources claiming that Linux will do this or that someday, and going back over the eight or nine years, there have always been some loudmouth know-it-alls claiming that the Linux desktop was going to rise and dominate... But year after year, it doesn't happen.

Another article on itfacts.biz summarizes a study from a reputable, named source (Gartner) that applies to the installed base of desktop OSes, the topic of our discussion, with the conclusion that desktop Linux currently amounts to less than half the installed base of Mac OS computers (mid-2004 projection).

Notwithstanding the fact that the page you link to (1) fails to name a source or explain its methodology, and (2) has nothing to do with desktop Linux installed base (as opposed to growth), the very same page links to a Gartner report that states: "By the end of the year [2004], Linux will be running on 1% of the desktop PC's worldwide, compared with 2.8% for Apple MacOS, and 96% for Microsoft Windows."

Sorry that you're delusional.

One off the cuff, but this perhaps serves his point well: http://www.itfacts.biz/index.php?id=P2398.

Apple is far from the largest 'shipper' of UNIX in the world, especially considering it's small place in the server market. I figure you're speaking within the context of desktops albeit.

I'm talking desktop operating systems. I will be very impressed if you can find any statistics that indicate Linux has a bigger installed base than 2% on the desktop.

An argument for giving back to the Unix community, from which they derive so much development capital, should not be justified by popularity alone.

Yes.

But we here have a case of both business ethics and long range thinking being absent. Sounds a familiar combination.

CC.

P.S.: Some interesting OS-statistics here

I also thought nobody ever clicks on these ads either, but i must admit i've even done it myself.

Read up and find out online ads can (still) be big business.

Ok, so the whole article seemed to pivot around the notion that the biggest problem Microsoft has is that consumers are not upgrading their software fast enough to improve current market returns. Yes, "Many organisations are still using Office '97 - an 8 year old release - and see no compelling reason to upgrade."

Organizations are using Microsoft products, and are not switching (to other Microsoft products). Sounds like a net zero change in market share to me.

Yes, Linux is expected to close in on Windows in a couple of years. From a 90% dominance today, to a projected 58% dominence. Oh yeah, only if you count dominance on PDAs. You see, Microsoft has 48.1% of the PDA market in Q3 2004, with Palm at #2 at 29.8%, and is expected to decline.

In the browser usage stats, Microsoft is dropping, with a 64.9% share, compared to up and coming FireFox at 20%. The problem is, FireFox looks like it hasnt gained any share since it peaked in Nov 2004. That's the best I could find for FireFox, since other studies put Microsoft's Internet Explorer at around 92.9 % dominance worldwide. Its very hard to get any two companies to agree on stats, because they're both approaching the question with different agendas.

But desktops, well, the statistics for Microsoft and Linux are all over the place. Last spring, Microsoft had 93% of the worldwide desktop market in their corner, but was still fighting (in Jan 2004) the business side to upgrade to the latest and greatest MS products. Microsoft really starts to cry in the server market, where IBM via Linux are barrelling through to win. Except Microsoft still has 59% of the server market, 3:1 today and 2:1 on projected Linux share. This was one of the few business statistic sites that actually had hard numbers, and even there, desktop stats appear pretty stale.

In conclusion, from browsing through Google, people have been making these same claims on market share dominance since 2001, "Linux is the up and comer, watch out!" and noone seems to ever back up their sides with hard numbers... nothing that actually shows a survey on how Windows:Linux ratios that actually shows Linux having a chance... every year, "we're coming to get you, this year is our year!" Maybe its because for all the talk, Linux really is a niche market after all...

Ok, so the whole article seemed to pivot around the notion that the biggest problem Microsoft has is that consumers are not upgrading their software fast enough to improve current market returns. Yes, "Many organisations are still using Office '97 - an 8 year old release - and see no compelling reason to upgrade."

Organizations are using Microsoft products, and are not switching (to other Microsoft products). Sounds like a net zero change in market share to me.

Yes, Linux is expected to close in on Windows in a couple of years. From a 90% dominance today, to a projected 58% dominence. Oh yeah, only if you count dominance on PDAs. You see, Microsoft has 48.1% of the PDA market in Q3 2004, with Palm at #2 at 29.8%, and is expected to decline.

In the browser usage stats, Microsoft is dropping, with a 64.9% share, compared to up and coming FireFox at 20%. The problem is, FireFox looks like it hasnt gained any share since it peaked in Nov 2004. That's the best I could find for FireFox, since other studies put Microsoft's Internet Explorer at around 92.9 % dominance worldwide. Its very hard to get any two companies to agree on stats, because they're both approaching the question with different agendas.

But desktops, well, the statistics for Microsoft and Linux are all over the place. Last spring, Microsoft had 93% of the worldwide desktop market in their corner, but was still fighting (in Jan 2004) the business side to upgrade to the latest and greatest MS products. Microsoft really starts to cry in the server market, where IBM via Linux are barrelling through to win. Except Microsoft still has 59% of the server market, 3:1 today and 2:1 on projected Linux share. This was one of the few business statistic sites that actually had hard numbers, and even there, desktop stats appear pretty stale.

In conclusion, from browsing through Google, people have been making these same claims on market share dominance since 2001, "Linux is the up and comer, watch out!" and noone seems to ever back up their sides with hard numbers... nothing that actually shows a survey on how Windows:Linux ratios that actually shows Linux having a chance... every year, "we're coming to get you, this year is our year!" Maybe its because for all the talk, Linux really is a niche market after all...

Server Sales 18% up - thats quite a share :-). Especially if you regard how hardware sales of servers developed in the end of last year:

Hewlett-Packard: +21%
Dell: +28%
IBM: +36%
(Gartner quote)
http://www.itfacts.biz/index.php?id=P243
There have to be quite a couple of linux- and other boxes, if Microsoft ist just +18%.
Anybody got more precise infos on actual sales of iron?
btw: Profits are also significantly up because of the cut in personell.

Details on different aspects of server sales: http://www.itfacts.biz/index.php?id=C0_5_1

Server Sales 18% up - thats quite a share :-). Especially if you regard how hardware sales of servers developed in the end of last year:

Hewlett-Packard: +21%
Dell: +28%
IBM: +36%
(Gartner quote)
http://www.itfacts.biz/index.php?id=P243
There have to be quite a couple of linux- and other boxes, if Microsoft ist just +18%.
Anybody got more precise infos on actual sales of iron?
btw: Profits are also significantly up because of the cut in personell.

Details on different aspects of server sales: http://www.itfacts.biz/index.php?id=C0_5_1

Again, the answer to the original question is not which codec is most efficent at compression (or even the fastest), but which codec is "best suited" for his business. Sure QT has its problems; but if you want to make sure your user has the least obstacles to overcome before viewing a video compressed on a cross-platform codec, you'd be hard pressed to find a better choice. QT also has brand recognition, people will be wary of installing some "open-source" codec over a codec branded with a company they trust. Besides, with QT, you're gauranteed 100% of the Mac user-base will have it installed.

I didn't recommend Real for obvious reasons...

• Windows Insider says Windows is huge and will have 60% by '08.
• IDC says that Windows will drop to 35%(!?!) by then, with Linux only 15%
• but then a couple of months later IDC says that linux will be up to 37.6%

• Windows Insider says Windows is huge and will have 60% by '08.
• IDC says that Windows will drop to 35%(!?!) by then, with Linux only 15%
• but then a couple of months later IDC says that linux will be up to 37.6%

In the desktop market, Linux has moved past Apple to become the #2 player, with about 6% of the market.

Market researcher IDC expects to announce within weeks that Linux PC market share in 2003 hit 3.2%, overtaking Apple Computer Inc.'s MacOS.

IDC estimates that Linux now claims more desktops worldwide than Apple.

Given that HP could jump to number 2 almost overnight by simply releasing a branded version of the iPod, Creative have a tough battle on their hands.

storage space is cheap.

storage space is cheap.

This is nothing to fret about. The United States is losing to the countries with high population density and smaller footprint, where wiring a city of size of Seoul or Amsterdam suddenly wires up 10-15% of country's population. If you take California or New York City and treat them as a separate country, the rate of broadband access would be quite competitive with the others. US of A is just a pretty big country to have anything decent in terms of % numbers.

Note, however, that on the same page it says US is leading the world in the total number of broadband connections with 31.7 million cable/DSL/other lines. The nearest competitor - China - only has 22.2 million broadband hook-ups.

This is nothing to fret about. The United States is losing to the countries with high population density and smaller footprint, where wiring a city of size of Seoul or Amsterdam suddenly wires up 10-15% of country's population. If you take California or New York City and treat them as a separate country, the rate of broadband access would be quite competitive with the others. US of A is just a pretty big country to have anything decent in terms of % numbers.

Note, however, that on the same page it says US is leading the world in the total number of broadband connections with 31.7 million cable/DSL/other lines. The nearest competitor - China - only has 22.2 million broadband hook-ups.

It is? With a market-share of less than 1.5% can someone please tell me how on earth they can remotely be a "competitor"?

Hell, HP became number 2 overnight simply by playing nice with Apple. Which just goes to show the sad state of affairs with the quality of competition that Apple is up against.

Mainly dealt with the blogging engines here, since most of the sites are content-driven without the need for many additional modules.

MovableType - fast to setup, easy to deploy, live community with hacks and what not around it, but since the move to the paid distro in 3.0 the activity died off a little bit. Never upgraded to the paid version, couldn't justify the license money with WordPress having so many similar features. It's a Perl+MySQL or Perl+flat file set up, so theoretically nothing more than cgi-bin is required.

Which brings us to WordPress - extensible, lively community, very easy to install and setup. The engine itself is a bit immature at this point for some advanced stuff, but if you know PHP, you'll find your way around it. Has a link manager and mass edit for comments (very useful for spam treatment), extensible as far as design, not too modular though.

pMachine - easy to set up, easy to use, but not too flexible. Coded in PHP and uses MySQL, many tweaks available, but limited functionality for the free version. The authors have since moved on to a different project, Expression Engine, and the community is a bit abandoned.

The above links are going to my sites which run the said engines, not the engines themselves, a simple google search would take you to download pages for the engines.

Someone else says:
As a percentage of online households, broadband penetration will be nearly 41% by the end of this year.

Browse through http://www.itfacts.biz/index.php?id=C0_15_1 maybe

Among those Americans who are online 44% support Bush and 39% support Kerry.

Americans lose $500 mln yearly to phishing.

That's large enough amount for personal scale, especially if you've lost the savings that have been put up against a new house or new car.

But on the large scale, banks won't care, the loss is $3-4 a person, you lose more per year on some dubious surcharges.