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Windows Drops Below 90% Market Share

ozmanjusri writes "Online market share of the dominant Windows operating system has taken its biggest monthly fall in years to drop below 90%, according to Net Applications Inc. Computerworld reports that Microsoft's flagship product has been steadily losing ground to Mac OS X and Linux, and is at its lowest ebb in the market since 1995. 'Mac OS X... [ended] the month at 8.9%. November was the third month running that Apple's operating system remained above 8%.' The stats show that while some customers are 'upgrading' from XP to Vista, many are jumping ship to Apple, while Linux is also steadily gaining ground. A Net Applications executive suggests the slide may be caused by many of the same factors that caused the fall in Internet Explorer use. 'The more home users who are online, using Macs and Firefox and Safari, the more those shares go up,' he said. November has more weekend days, as well Thanksgiving in the US, a result that emphasizes the importance of corporate sales to Microsoft."

12 of 595 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Ha! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you write a true comment in a Flamebaitisticalish way (which you did), you will get modded as such ;)

  2. Pulling stats out of thin air by dedazo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Hi twitter.

    EEE PC has sold more than 4 million, most of them GNU/Linux

    Really? I must admit I didn't know much about this but a little bit of Google reveals this interview with ASUS CEO Jerry Shen, which I think was also reported here on Slashdot (about the return rates for Linux devices, which he seems to invalidate):

    I think the return rate for the Eee PCs are low but I believe the Linux and Windows have similar return rates. We really separate the products into different user groups. A lot of users like the Windows XP, but in Europe a lot of people want the Linux option. Actually in Linux we support the Easy Mode and in Q4 of this year we are going to start selling Windows XP with an Easy Mode.

    Here's another article where Shen is also quoted about the ratio of XP to Linux EEE units sold, which he says is 60:40:

    Shen -- who is keen on Linux -- said Asus had hoped sales of Eee PCs would be 50:50 between XP and Linux, but actually they were 60:40 in XP's favour. (I assume that's for this calendar year.) So far, around 4m have been sold, and the target is 5m for this year.

    So obviously you're just making that up. Nothing like bogus facts and words like "laughable" and "undeniable" to get on moderators' good graces, eh?

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  3. Re:Measurement by je+ne+sais+quoi · · Score: 3, Informative
    As I pointed out when I submitted another story of the same subject yesterday (which for some reason wasn't selected for the front page, I think slashdot needs to wait for something to be old news before it makes the front page): A CNN blog has a write-up on it that contains some information on how this is measured:

    Net Applications' monthly surveys are conducted by sampling browser data from some 160 million visits to Web sites operated by firm's clients. Although the company describes the results as "market shares," Net Applications does not actually measure share of market in the traditional sense of sales revenue or unit sales. It does, however, provide a consistent methodology by which to measure browser and operating system trends.

    I don't know if their clients are U.S. only or Worldwide.

    Also in that report, it shows that Firefox use broke 20% for the first time ever at the expense of Internet Explorer.

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  4. Re:Monopoloy by zubikov · · Score: 5, Informative

    The US antitrust regulators like to go by two metrics: Herfindahl Index (HHI) and Market Concentration Ratio (google them up). HHI = s1^2 + s2^2 + s3^2 + ... + sn^2 (where sn is the market share of the ith firm) If the HHI index is > 1800, this usually means it's a monopoly. Nothing is set in stone, but play around with the numbers and you'll get an idea. Basically Microsoft is still considered a monopoly for a long time.

  5. Re:Monopoloy by greg1104 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Guess you missed this antitrust lawsuit over the iPod?

  6. Re:Will someone please think of the XP users? by RobertM1968 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Bad upper management decisions doomed CompUSA - such as focusing on advertising printers that had no real profit, instead of advertising their formerly lucrative (and always profitable) Tech Services and Business Services divisions. By the time people in upper management were changed out with people who understood this, the company didnt have the money to fix the problem (though they did come up with very viable plans to do so - just couldnt get the backing at that point).

    PCs and Windows sales had nothing to do with it. Do you have any idea how many people didnt even know we repaired PCs? Or that we had a Business Sales and Services department? Or that we offered training on a variety of things?

    The above, and no longer catering to the core customers that maintained their profitability were the cause.

    I know... I was there.

  7. FLAWED METHODOLOGY by Computershack · · Score: 4, Informative
    That's a report about a market share based on the number of connections to a restricted amount of websites that run adverts hosted by Net Apps partners.
    Only problem with that is if you run Adblock et al, you'll not show up in the stats. If you don't connect to one of the sites running Net Apps partner adverts, you'll not show up in the stats. If you don't use the internet or use it rarely, you'll not show up in the stats.

    This site gives a better view as it aggregates data from several different sources and doesn't just use one that can be excluded by an ad blocker.

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  8. Re:Good news by jellomizer · · Score: 5, Informative

    90% for windows.
    8.9% for Mac
    Meaning 1.1% for Linux and other Operating Systems.
    It is Mac who is taking MS. Market Share, not Linux... Sorry. Just because we are all group together so it seems like we are a majority the truth is Linux users are in a small minority.

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  9. Re:Monopoloy by chaim79 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Amazon got DRM free for two reasons:

    • They caved to the Music Companies demands for variable pricing (iTunes refuses to price on 'demand' but leave everything at 99c)
    • Music companies don't like iTunes dominance in the market, they tried giving Amazon DRM Free music to try and make it more attractive then iTunes

    There might have also been demands that Apple force the sale of Albums (vs single tracks) at the Music Companies whim, but I'm not sure if that was part of this or other negotiations...

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  10. Re:Good news by sdpuppy · · Score: 4, Informative

    90% for windows. 8.9% for Mac Meaning 1.1% for Linux and other Operating Systems.

    ominous voice : There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of... oh forget that.

    Oh man, just RTFA's links:

    Percent for Jan Aug Nov

    Windows 91.50 90.66 89.62

    Mac 7.57 7.86 8.87

    Linux 0.64 0.93 0.83

    iPhone 0.13 0.30 0.37

    Playstation 0.03 0.04 0.04

    FreeBSD 0.00 0.00 0.01

    Other 0.13 0.21 0.26

    http://marketshare.hitslink.com/os-market-share.aspx?qprid=9

  11. Re:BSD is dead by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you mean that OSX is a descendant of FreeBSD then you are mistaken.

    OS X uses a Mach Kernel, but OS X and FreeBSD OSs include more than a kernel. Much of the OS X userspace is derived from FreeBSD and as such one can claim OS X a a descendent of NextStep (Mach), FreeBSD, and the original MacOS.

  12. Re:BSD is dead by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 3, Informative

    Nah, that would just be stuff they both inherited from their common ancestor.

    That just isn't so. Next integrated parts of both FreeBSD and OpenBSD into NextStep, which in turn was pulled into OS X, but Apple also pulled in additional parts of the FreeBSD userspace in the creation of OS X. Heck, they still are doing so as the latest release version (Leopard) pulled in some of the ACL architecture from the TrustedBSD project of FreeBSD. OS X is clearly a direct descendent of FreeBSD via multiple paths.