Market Share Reports On Linux

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.

Comments

Not a clue about Apple

[Otter]

Note that this paragraph is discussing clients, not servers.
The upcoming Mac OS X (read "10") represents a complete overhaul and a radical strategy for Apple (for one thing, core OS X source code is freely available). Before birthing it, Apple aborted its Copland and Rhapsody OS plans and cut loose its MkLinux team after years of laboring on these projects, losing time and credibility. However, MkLinux (now independent) and LinuxPPC are shipping and can run on older Macs.

Huh?

• OS X is Rhapsody, albeit a lot later and a lot different than originally promised.
• I hardly think resources spent MkLinux were what was holding Apple back. That was, what, three full-time engineers? How much time was invested in MkLinux, let alone credibility? And the work on Mach was valuable for OS X.
• And, of course, OS 9 is still shipping and is at least as well suited for office desktop use than MkLinux or LinuxPPC.

IDC is not reliable.

[BitGeek]

I used to work in the industry and had numerous discussions with "analysts" from IDC, Forrester, Jupiter, etc. My experience there showed me that all of these "Reports" and "Analysis" are really propaganda under another form.

The analysts are paid to write reports showing the growth and projected growth of various industry segments. These reports are commisioned by companies in the industries in question. They are then sold to other companies in the smae industry.

For instance, say I'm a major software vendor, and want to do a new product in the project management software industry- I'll have IDC write a report justifying why this industry is going to grow at %20 a year for the next decade. They will go and look for supporting evidence, but since statistics can often lie, when you go looking for a specific growth rate, you will find it.

So, for instance, while Apple continues to hold about %30 of the installed base of computers, IDC shows them with only %5 of the market, because its convenient for them to only count new computer sales for Apple. While Linux is probably 5 times as popular as they show in their "survey" windows is shown to be dominant.

Why? Because the people who have the money who pay IDC have a vested interest in windows.

This is no different than the investment bank that brought acompany public issuing a report with a buy recommendation on that companies stock.

There is NO credibility here, whatsoever.

Meanwhile, back in the real world...

[Black Parrot]

See Netcraft's analysis of OS market shares in their July 2000 survey.

In short, and using the conservative numbers:

• Linux : 29.99%
• Windows (all types) : 28.32%
• Solaris : 16.33%
• Other : 23.59%
• Unknown : 1.76%

These numbers are for Web servers only; they filter out duplicate names for the same site, and also "placeholder" sites, but do not filter out virtual hosting. So it's "sites" rather than "machines".

They also used some statistical sampling, but do not report a margin of error.

--

Re:They're missing something though...

[SoftwareJanitor]

I'll be damned if I'm going to run linux until I _know_ that there are at least 4.5 million boxes running it.

Netcraft says that there are over 10 million servers running Apache on the publicly accessable internet. Those are machines that are running basically 24/7, not 'dual boot' machines or people's dialup boxes that are getting miscounted. Netcraft also says that over 1/3 of the Apache servers are running Linux as their OS. According to the Linux counter, less than 30% of Linux boxes are used as web servers.

Given those numbers, how could anyone reasonably believe that there aren't well more than 4.5 million Linux boxes running out there?

And yes, I am probably just feeding the trolls...

They're missing something though...

[AugstWest]

They're couting shipments of Linux, which totally misses out on all of the downloads.

I've set up a good 30 linux boxes in my time, and I've never purchased a single copy.

Once again, Linux doesn't fit into the normal boxes used to judge these things. The distribution model for it is entirely unheard of, and so they don't have any mechanisms for couting this massively popular means of obtaining linux.

Also, shipments of an operating system that can be installed a theoretically infinite number of times are obviously skewed when compared to OSs like NT, which are to be installed on a single server.

Comparing Apples and Oranges

[martyb]

Interesting article, but there's some comparisons going on here that aren't quite as clear-cut as they seem at first glance.

Figure 1 - Worldwide, 1999 Client and Server Operating Environment Revenues by Platform ($B)

Well, DUH! Ain't much revenue for an "Operating Environment" that can be downloaded for free, so no wonder Linux lags behind 32-bit windows.

Figure 2- Worldwide Client Operating Environment New License Shipment Shares 1999 and Shipment Growth 1999-2004

Now that's better, as they are now comparing the number of Licenses instead of Dollars, but what do they define as a "client"? Does a TiVObox running Linux count? What about an IBM watch? Besides, I can just as well install the server version of Linux (or NT, for that matter) on my home PC.

Figure 3 - Worldwide Server Operating Environment New License Shipment Shares 1999 and Shipment Growth 1999-2004

Again, how do they define and differentiate between servers? I'd be willing to bet that a license for Solaris on a big Sun box is not really on the same par as a 486DX66 running a Linux server, but it seems that a license is a license is a license according to these stats.