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Red Hat's Linux Market Share Eroding?

Posted by Hemos on from the sometimes-a-fedora-is-just-a-fedora dept.

chamont writes: "Even though Red Hat is still number 1, this article states that Caldera, SuSE, and Turbo are gaining ground fast. The article also mentions that Corel is pretty much history." Interesting to see -- what's cool is that the Linux market, at least what they measured, grew 89% overall. Turbolinux had monstrous growth overall -- you can see a lot more is happening on Pacific Rim.

2 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Corel is actualy #3 and rising by frank249 · · Score: 5
    If Corel Linux is dying why is it in the top ten in the Computer Shopper Hot Products listing and ranking 385 in sales at Amazon?

    It is because Corel Linux is currently #3 in sales and by next month should be number 2. The stats given in the article was from Dec 99. Corel Linux was only released in Nov 99 so obviously it did not have much of a market share in Dec. Since then Corel has launched WPO2K-L, CD9-L, PP9-L and CLOS SE. Since Corel is after the desktop and RedHat is in the server market it is hard to compare. Here are the IDC stats from Jul 2000

    Retail sales in July 2000 - Source: PC Data With a 32,966-unit-sample selected by PC Data

    1 - Linux-Mandrake: 31,5%

    2 - Red Hat: 24,9%

    3 - Corel: 23,0%

    4 - TurboLinux: 8,4%

    5 - SuSE: 6,1%

    6 - Caldera: 4,3%

    The only reason Mandrake has these numbers is that it is bundled with MacMillan's books. I can tell you that I have their cds in one of the books I bought but they have never been used. If you could find out what people actualy have installed I am sure that Corel would fair better. Now if I can find these stats why can't the rest of the media? Here is IDC for Feb and Nov

    Linux®: US RETAIL MARKET SHARE PCDATA RETAIL

    Revenue - Share_____Feb-00 _____ Nov-99

    Red Hat________ 40.4% _____ 58.5%

    Macmillan _____ 19.6% _____ 21.5%

    Corel ________ 19.3% _____ 2.3%

    S.U.S.E. _____ 7.1% _____ 0.7%

    TurboLinux _____ 4.1% _____ 1.1%

    Caldera _______ 3.0% _____ 6.9%

    The CNet download stats are interesting also. While downloads don't directly translate into revenue they are a good indication of popularity, brand recognition and potential upgrade_apps sales. Total download stats from CNet show:

    Corel Linux (since Nov 99) 307,840

    RedHat (since Mar 98) 334,857

    Caldera 39,495

    Mandrake 86,505

    SuSE 5,946

    WordPerfect 8 for L PE (since Dec 98) 1,134,190

    Star Office PE (?) 160,644

    If you look at the monthly trend this year you can see that CLOS is more popular than RedHat by 30% and WP almost 350% more than Star Office.

    Summary since 30 Apr 00

    ___________________WP84L_____CLOS_______RedHat____ ____Star Office

    27-Aug________________ 5,610______ 3,188_______ 2,728______1,634 weekly snip

    25 Jun - 16 Jul_________21,730_____13,304 _____12,501(monthly total)

    28 May - 18 Jun_______27,318_____19,573 _____15,106

    30 Apr - 21 May ______25,900 _____24,805 _____15,512

    Totals________________107,149______81,478_____61 ,103 BTW the above story is just a rip off of a CNet article of 31 Aug Red Hat holds huge Linux lead, rivals growing By Stephen Shankland It also cited these 'recent figures from IDC.

    --

    Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.

  2. not a good measurement? by gbroiles · · Score: 5

    I think "market share" deserves more careful thought when applied to free software - the study would seem to describe "market share among people who purchased packaged distributions" which is pretty different from number of installations, which is what many people think "market share" means, or ought to mean.

    Is Apache's "market share" of the webserver market 0%, because the Apache Software Foundation doesn't sell any copies? I don't think so.

    The methodology used is great if you're trying to figure out who's making how much money from selling Linux distributions, but isn't so great if you're trying to figure out which distributions are good ones, or popular ones.

    In particular, distributions which are easy to install via the Net and/or easy to install without documentation are much less likely to require the use of floppies, CD's, or installation manuals - so it may be that distributions which sell a lot are actually inferior, technically, but that inferiority drives sales.

    I don't say that to pick on Red Hat - one of my boxes runs Red Hat, and I've been pretty happy with it, and don't know enough about the other contemporary distros to pick on them. I just think it's a shame to read more into these numbers than is reasonable.