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."

Comments

Pulling stats out of thin air

[dedazo]

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?

Re:Monopoloy

[zubikov]

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.

Re:Monopoloy

[greg1104]

Guess you missed this antitrust lawsuit over the iPod?

Re:Will someone please think of the XP users?

[RobertM1968]

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.

FLAWED METHODOLOGY

[Computershack]

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.

Re:Good news

[jellomizer]

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.

Re:Good news

[sdpuppy]

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

Re:BSD is dead

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

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.