Linux will have 20% desktop market share by 2008?

unmadindu writes "Siemens Business Systems, after conducting an extensive survey on non technical workers ("secretaries and managers, not IT people") is predicting that the Linux desktop will capture 20% of the market for desktop computers in large enterprises within the next 5 years. Senior program manager Duncan McNutt, who has overseen Siemens's testing of Linux desktops with users and administrators in enterprise settings, believes that the Ximian desktop and application suite, running on either SuSE or Red Hat, requires two days of training, which is the same as what most enterprises budget for a Windows/MS Office version upgrade. Interestingly, they used Ximian Desktop, instead of KDE, because Gnome, particularly Ximian's version, was "different enough" to set user expectations that the experience would be less like Windows. "

Comments

Title misleading

[csnydermvpsoft]

The title leads one to believe that Linux will have 20% of all desktops. However, it's actually 20% of desktops in large corporations. Still very cool, but not quite as significant.

1/2 or 1/3 ?

[Councilor Hart]

From the article: "If you can keep a machine running at acceptable levels of performance for three years rather than two, you've just saved 50% on hardware costs," McNutt says.

Consider a time span of 6 years. That is 2 linux computers or 3 windows computers.
I'd say that you've just saved 1/3 on hardware costs.

The Nice Thing about Predictions...

[heironymouscoward]

Is that few people come back to check afterwards.

Siemens is presumably positioning themselves as a Linux vendor. Whatever they say should be taken with a large pinch of salt.

The future has an amazing ability to be exactly like the past in every aspect we thought it would change, and totally different in those aspects we expected to remain the same.

So, here is my prediction of Linux in 2008:

- There will be an explosion in the development of portable computers, provoked by the appearance of OLED screens that are cheap and flexible and gentle on batteries.

- Some of these computers will be truly wierd, ranging from disposable to wall-sized.

- Most of these new devices will run Linux or another free OS with similar plasticity and easy consumption.

- By 2008, server computers will be assembled out of brick-style units (storage, CPU, devices) that let you throw together a server of any capability from standard pieces with no tools. The OS will be Linux, the principal vendors will be IBM and DELL, the technology remarkably similar to clustering. Windows will try and fail to compete.

- The concept of 'desktop' will thus be totally passe by 2008. Only poor slobs will keep a desk chained to a computer.

- The majority of 'desktop's outside the US and parts of Europe will run Linux distributions.

- Most of those distributions will be heavily customised per country, often sponsored by governments. This will start in China and India and work up through every literate and connected country.

- The US will remain the stubborn consumer of desktop Windows OS and applications.

Conclusion: Windows can only dominate a market that is static. But markets do not rest. New technologies permit and drive new platforms, and each time, it gets harder to justify Windows. In 5 years, the current landscape will have been changed by the appearance of many new platforms where Windows is a poor second choice. It is these new platforms that will finally kill Windows and Microsoft, not replacement on the desktop.