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

Ha!

[elrous0]

And I get modded flamebait for pointing out earlier today that Apple is gaining market share? It's true. Apple is gaining ground. Of course, it probably doesn't help MS that Vista isn't exactly setting the world on fire.

Re:Ha!

[ByOhTek]

No, it's not apples gain in market share people were complaining about, it was the conclusion that desire to write viruses and market share have any significant correlation that they were probably modding you on.

Remember, not many mods follow the 'there is no -1 disagree for a reason' rule for modding.

That being said, I think the whole 8.9% market share in conjunction with Apple's "We're number 1" cheerleader commercial quite hilarious.

Re:Ha!

[Timothy Brownawell]

Okay, let's get a little perspective here. It's a common meme in the business that Microsoft makes more money selling software to Mac users than Apple makes selling Macs to Mac users. I'm not positive whether that's still true, but it would not surprise me in the least if it was. MS-Office for Mac still costs a king's ransom and still sells like hotcakes at Apple Stores everywhere.

Maybe I'm being naive here, but how could this possibly be true? Even if every single Mac owner bought a copy of Office for every single Mac they owned, wouldn't Microsoft still be making less money by virtue of the fact that Office is (hopefully? I haven't checked) cheaper than the Mac itself?

Assume a mac costs $1000 and has a 5% profit margin.
Assume MS-Office costs $100 and has a 51% profit margin.
Apple gets $50 (net) for each mac sold, while MS gets $51 (net). So MS makes $1 more with 1/10 as much in sales, due to the absurd profit margin having a copyright gives them.

(note that I don't know what the real numbers are, the ones here are made up to show how this could be possible)

Re:Ha!

[GuyverDH]

Correct, however, since when do we allow the topic of the article to restrict commentary.

The poster that I responded to questioned the validity of OS X *and* Linux chipping away at Microsoft's market share.

While Linux based OS desktop marketshare may be minimal in the United States, there are many countries where it's gaining a lot of momentum, especially in the government arenas.

But in the server arena is where Linux based operating systems are really carving into Microsoft's market share.

Re:Ha!

[ozmanjusri]

Microsoft sells almost all of their software wholesale and make only a few bucks per copy.

The cost of duplication for an OS is almost $0 now.

Microsoft margins on Windows and Office are enormous. It's a clear indicator that they are still a monopoly.

The grand-daddy of them all was the unit responsible for Windows. It had costs of just $545 million but generated a profit of $2264 million, a staggering 415.4% profit on the money they put into it.

Let's put this in context. Dell's recent quarterly statement shows its margin at about 9%, which is a lower margin than even the least productive of Microsoft's profit-making groups. IBM's margin is similar to Dell's but HP's is about 6% in total, thanks mainly to printers, and Sun Microsystems is even lower.

http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2003/11/16/microsofts-money-machine-revealed

Monopoloy

[BradleyUffner]

Just curious, but at what point is Microsoft no longer considered a monopoloy? At what percentage are they legally allowed to start pulling the dirty tricks again?

Re:Monopoloy

[TeacherOfHeroes]

90^2 is 8100 (and 10^2=100 for a total of 8200) - maybe the GP just got the 8 and 1 reversed

The Big news: Linux failed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux seems to have completely failed to capitalize on Vistas unpopularity, still having less than 1% market share.

Re:The Big news: Linux failed.

[jmorris42]

> Linux seems to have completely failed to capitalize on Vistas unpopularity,
> still having less than 1% market share.

Patience. The netbook appears to be the crack that the penguin has been waiting for. If I had told you three years ago that I forsaw Linux being sold in Target and ToysRUs you would have laughed. Honestly, I would laughed too because I didn't see it coming either. But seeing is believing.

To date we have faced a chicken and the egg problem. Nobody wanted to try selling Linux because nobody had ever succeeded selling Linux. Everybody believed that (Mac excepted, those people are just wierd) all PCs were Windows sales, largely because Microsoft would brutally punish any OEM who didn't agree. All that is now changed. We now know that Linux can be successfully sold in retail environments when correctly executed. ASUS reports return rates sililar to Windows while Acer's less polished implementation was a disaster, thus the correct lesson will be learned; do it right and it sells.

And just wait for the pricepoints on netbooks to shift even lower. Microsoft will either be forced to abandon the segment (fatal) or slash prices to levels that will have Wall Street analysts howling for blood.

Once everyone has completed the mental adjustment to retail Linux as a done deal the whole industry will have to take a long hard look at one of the (if not THE) most expensive components in a lower end PC. If ordinary people will buy an EEE or a Dell Mini 9 with Linux, would they buy a low end desktop (of the sort that won't play current FPS games anyway) if the level of integration were similar? Expect to find out the answer to that question over the next year or two. Will Crossover/Transgaming have a part to play in the final solution? Looking at how Parallels, VMWare and/or Crossover Mac are on display anywhere Mac software is sold I'd put my money on yes.

Re:The Big news: Linux failed.

[jmorris42]

> But they're not. They're putting bigger screens, keyboards, and drives in them.

Because for most of the year an EEE PC on a shelf was about as rare as a Wii. So if you can sell every box you can ship the decision of which to make more of is a simple one. The one with the best profit. That was the 900 series. But ASUS is promising to finally hit their original $200 MSRP next year. And if they don't there are countless generic Chinese houses with products entering the channels and some of those don't even have an x86 compatible CPU so Windows isn't really an option.

When the latest ARM chips finally make it into actual products the whole game is likely to be changed yet again. Imagine a two pound netbook with 10+ hours of battery life with enough DSP grunt to be able to do Flash, YouTube and mpeg4 playback. And it just might be able to run compiz. That will change everything. The great weakness that to date nobody has been able to exploit with Windows is the fact they killed off all their ports and have tied their fortunes to the fate of x86. No x86 on a development map gets near the 1W under load power consumption mark and the notion of idle power in the single digit milliwatt range is fantasy. ARM is already there.

So be patient, those netbooks in blister packs hanging as impulse purchases are the future. And Windows isn't likely to be a part of that future.

Design is everything

[davecrusoe]

Of course this makes great sense. Design and efficiency in computing are the next big thing, and MSFT seems to do lots of research but no integration.

On the other hand, Apple and others have created very nice, simple and streamlined applications that seem to be driven less by research than by practical testing and design.

Which means that, in the future, Apple and others will continue to gain ground... unless... the new windows... nah...

I'm not surpised

[kcredden]

I kind of figured this would start around the time I read about Vista's specs. DRM, bloated beyond anything. Then the more Vista was turned out, the more I can see this happening. Then when netbooks came out, and people was snapping them up like candy, and knew they couldn't possibly run Vista, I could see the other nail. Now that the economy may slip into a depression, well - now how many of us can afford their overpriced licenses, buying new systems every 2 years or so, and not to mention being locked into a 1 OS p/computer that MS does? I've just started using Kunbuntu 8.04.1, and frankly I'm on my way to tossing Win2k for good. Except for a few minor programs that has to be jerks in installing, I've installed about 80% of the programs I use, dual monitor capiblity works like a charm, and best of all. I can use *all* of my harddrives. So tell me why I need XP? Or Vista? Why should I put up with MS's bull about buying a whole new OS everytime I add or change somehting in my computer? I think a lot of people are seeing the same thing, when all we do mostly is work, (except for gamers.) It may come to the point, that Windows will be ONLY a gaming platform - much like a PS3, or so. Lets just hope that like what happened to IE after FF started to bite, they get off their lazy rumps and really do something *good* with Windows, instead of just bloating it up with useless junk. Yeah, and horses will fly too :) - Kc

How do these people get their stats?

[jeevesbond]

I just don't trust these stats (and that's not because they don't say what I want them to), from the Net Applications site:

We use a unique methodology for collecting this data. We collect data from the browsers of site visitors to our exclusive on-demand network of live stats customers. The data is compiled from approximately 160 million visitors per month.

So it's all customers from some analytics service these guys own. But what type of sites use their service? It's hard to believe these figures do not have a built-in bias due to the types of sites providing them.

By far the most popular analytics service is Google Analytics.* If Google were to produce figures like these, I'd be more inclined to believe them, as their analytics software is used on a decent cross-section of sites, including technical ones like Slashdot.

My own data -- with bias due to having a technical audience -- across two sites, says roughly: Windows 75%; Mac 9%; Linux 13% (with 3% AWStats reports as 'Unknown', and other sundry OSs like BSD, OS/2, AmigaOS, BeOS etc.) None of my sites use Net Applications' software, and get around 125,000 visitors a month.

* Sorry I haven't a citation for this, but just look at the source code of almost any site and you'll see a Javascript block from Google Analytics. Also, see this unscientific evidence.

Re:Yes, Laughable Numbers.

[Flyers2391]

I may be odd but I changed my useragent string on my work laptop to read as firefox on linux. I am lucky enough to use firefox at work but I changed it out of principle ... every little bit helps (or at least that's what I tell myself)

Just Look Around

[stewbacca]

The Apple section at the local Best Buy is the busiest part of the whole store. It may be completely anecdotal, but I've been using Macs since 1989 and I've NEVER seen so much mainstream interest.

Re:I believe it ....

[maugle]

Users switching from IE to FF means nothing in the long run

On the contrary. If not for Firefox on Windows, I wouldn't be using Linux today. As the GP said, "when people realize there are alternatives, they start to look for MORE of them".

And Apple is near thier peak of marketshare

[HomerJ]

Apple will NEVER get more than maybe 10% of the market. The company doesn't scale well. And they tie OSX to their hardware.

Let's say Apple releases Snow Leopard. It's the greatest OS known to man. it's 50% faster than 10.5, runs ALL Windows applications faster than Windows, has ZFS as the filesystem, and has zero security flaws.

Ok, great, let's run it. But I have to buy a machine from Apple. Now if I just want a machine, I can get one. But Apple has enough problems with releasing new systems with their 8% share now. What happens when this goes to 20%? 30%? They are bottlenecked by the number of systems they can produce. They physically can't get the number of systems out there to get any real marketshare. Is OSX better than Vista? No arguments here. But what already has more share? When you have one company releasing something, and everyone else releasing something else, Windows will win every time. It doesn't matter how great OSX is, or how shitty Windows is. Which this is something most people figured out ages ago. Except for the Apple people, who somehow think OSX can take over the world.

Now if they licensed OSX, and then you have Dell, HP, et.al. selling them, it's another thing. But Jobs will never do this, so talking about it is a moot point.

Re:And Apple is near thier peak of marketshare

[fermion]

There are several issues here. First, 10% is a typical point where people feel there are going to lose control of a situation. As long as the minority player is under 10%, everyone feels safe. We seem to inherently fear 10%, os welcome any comments that claim the minority players will never exceed, or even approach, 10%.

Second, i don't see apple having huge problems with hardware. They have problems releasing pretty hardware that stays pretty, and has occasional issues with high performance, but in 20+ years of buying Apple hardware, I have never received a significantly defective product. I know other have, but often those defects are 'a barely visible crack on the edge of case after a month of use after I dropped it on the ground' kind of defects.

Clearly the market will not bear a computer that costs $1500+ dollars, at least at the 25% market penetration. Clearly Apple will have to the push iMacs and MacBooks that are closer to $500. They have no done so, and may never do so. They may always remain between 10 and 20%. This is not bad. If Apple has 15%, and *nix has 5%, then MS will have 80%. What this means is that we will no longer have the MS centric world in which standards are set by a single monolithic entity.

As far as licensing Mac OS, Apple cannot exhort the prices that MS can, so it cannot survive as a seller of software. How many companies do? It cannot subsidize the OEM, so it is unclear if an Apple computer can ever be as cheap as a MS. Aren't *nix boxes more expensive that the comparable MS?

In any case, i would much prefer someone like HP or Sun to develop a competitor laptop to the macbook than a bunch of POS Apple clones. We have enough crappy computers. What I want is a good computer.

M$'s market share - then and now

[StuffedFrogYK]

Having 90% market share in 1995 is not the same as 90% market share in 2008. A better comparison would be with a number/volume difference. Also, how do THEY know how many people had Windows in 1995?

Re:Will someone please think of the XP users?

[sammyF70]

I own an Acer Aspire One with ... well ... something they called Linux on it. Upon boot you are greeted with big shiny colourfull buttons to start some of the applications which are actually installed on the AA1 and you have no way to add any application you might need (VLC or Skype) if you never used any linux distro before.
Of course, a 5 second search on Google will show you how to very easily remove the original desktop menu, revert to a real (xfce) desktop with way more applications, and all the nifty things anyone with some linux experience would expect (like the ability to download and add software easily through Pirut), but that means you have to know that it's possible in the first place. Most people buying notebooks don't have any idea about what Linux distros can or can't offer, so, for them, Linux IS the Linpus desktop ... and it's a complete turn-down. Even the (shareware) games one can access by default sucks donkey balls : they didn't even think to include any form of solitaire, even though pysol, which would blow your typical "I only play the card game in windows" type of user's mind away, is in the repositories

I think the reason many people install pirated (or not) version of XP on it is due to the dumbed down distros netbooks are sold with, and in my paranoid hours I even wonder how much pressure Microsoft is putting on the netbook manufacturers to make sure that Linux looks as bad as possible.

My ~jailbreaked~ (if one could call "alt+f2"->"terminal"->"xfce-panel" a jailbreak) AA1 is happily running Blender2.48, Skype, VLC, Kryta (thanks to a non-standard gtk lib, installing Gimp is non-trivial), Audacity, Armagetronad, scorched3D, and a lot of other ~standard~ stuff on the underlying xfce desktop (It's still the original Linpus distro!). I actually modelled and rendered a rather complex scene using Blender while traveling, and then developped a minigame in python using Geany. I could run compiz quite well if I wanted (I only start it up when showing people what the AA1 is actually capable of, as it's the best way to drain the battery)
If I had only known XP prior to buying the AA1 I guess I'd have been disgusted and would have had a completely wrong picture about what Linux is capable of ... and would have looked for any way to install XP on it, even though it probably would have run like a dog, compared to linpus/xfce

Re:Good news

[i.of.the.storm]

Yeah, I doubt it too, but I'm just curious how much of an impact it will have, since the G1 is more oriented to consumers than Linux by itself normally is.

Breathe deeply, now.

[westlake]

Let's take a closer look at the Net Applications stats:

The iPhone platform is less than one year old, and at 0.4% has a presence half the size of Linux. Operating System Market Share

MS Vista has 20% of the market, up 8% since January. Linux 0.8%, up 0.2%. Pathetic.

In rounded numbers, Windows - all versions - still has a 90% share.

It takes a Geek to read statistical significance in a 1% drop in a webstat.

The most useful way to read these numbers is simply as a reminder of the growing number of web-enabled mobile devices and home appliances -- a reminder as well that both Apple and Microsoft are both significant and successful players in these emerging markets.

GNU/Linux is free speech, not a product

[wikinerd]

GNU/Linux does not have a market share because it operates out of the market. A few GNU/Linux distributions are commercial and therefore can have market share, but the majority of distros operate in out of the market. GNU/Linux is out of the market because it is not a product. Rather, GNU/Linux is an act of free speech, an act of love and passion, and a gift.

So, counting the market share of GNU/Linux has no meaning, since it's not a product. Calling it a competitor to any other OS is also wrong, for the same reason. Calling free software products of competitors are propaganda terms designed to make decision makers believe that GNU/Linux could potentially be subject to regulations about products. But if they suceed in this, then they can cook some new regulation that would effectivelly ban GNU/Linux. Don't let them do this, call GNU/Linux and free software what it really is: free speech, not a product, and therefore protected as free speech rather than subject to product regulations.

Just to tell you an example, suppose a new regulation says that all products must contain encryption that is X bits powerful and the keys be submitted to a central repository, but that the product must take precautions not to let its users discover the keys. Such a regulation would apply on products (IANAL: I am not a lawyer), but what if you printed a book with your words that just happen to be the secret keys? Free speech is protected so printing a book must be ok (IANAL: I am not a lawyer). Now, if someone comes and say "look you hackers, you created an OS and you put it online for download, therefore you have put a product in the market, therefore you must hide the secret key" that would be a cause of trouble if they suceed in labelling free software packages as products. But free software in my view is not a product, it is an exercise of free speech.

So, next time someone labels your free software a product, a market participant, or a competitor to their products, just tell them the truth: your free software was never supposed to be viewed as a product, your free software is instead only an act of free speech, and the fact that it is available online is an exercise of the right of assembly and communication with other people, as well as a gift.

In a similar way, product regulations may say that new TVs should do this and that, but if you are an engineer and you build your own homebrew TV at home and you just want to post its blueprints online to share your passion with fellow homebrew engineers then your creations should be treated as free speech rather than as an attempt to enter the market, therefore in my view amateurs should not be subject to product and market regulation rules in the same way as commercial players are.

Of course I have absolutely no idea whether this line of thinking would make any sense in a legal setting about questions of applicability of product regulations on free software, as I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

My clients are doing the same

[Master of Transhuman]

One of my clients just told me this week that four of their people, who were on my maintenance contract for Windows support, would be shifted to Mac laptops. Two other staff members were shifted earlier, and they are happy with their systems after having had problems with Vista and XP. The staff members who were shifted basically don't do much beyond email and Web work, so they don't really need a lot of Windows software. One of the two earlier shifted staff members is running Parallels on her Mac to deal with QuickBooks. This company will probably shift several more people in the new future.

One of my other clients, which does digital media conversion, has brought in a Mac server-grade system to handle some of their video editing which was bogging down their Windows XP workstations.

So, yes, it's happening. The dam is breaking and people are getting fed up with Windows to the degree that they can afford to (i.e., software lock-in.)

Re:Good news

[Anonymous Coward]

Roughly:

90% Windows
9% Mac
0.9% Linux
0.09% BSD
0.009% Amiga
0.0009% DOS
0.00009% CP/M
etc.

Obviously Linux is behind, but an interesting question is whether it has gained more market share (in a multiplicative sense) than Apple. Obviously, we went from 0 to 1% in the last 20 years (an infinite increase!) while Apple had some finite share in 1988, but over the past two years, from Net Applications, we have:
Mac: 8.87/5.67 = 1.56
Linux: 0.83/0.37 = 2.24

Linux's growth, therefore, seems to be even faster, potentially implying that it will overtake Mac. Of course, the current situation is marked by Linux and Mac competing much more with Windows than with each other, which will go away before we get to a year of Linux|Mac on the desktop; extrapolation is foolish. But it's still fun!

Re:Good news

[Max Littlemore]

Unfortunately yes. I know a lot of windows users that use that IE tab or whatever it's called in Firefox. When I have mentioned a site being shit because it doesn't work in firefox, they say "yes it does" and tell me to get this IE tab thing. Then look confused when I tell them it doesn't work on Linux.

And these people are developers. Shitty ones that can only target IE, but employed developers nonetheless.

Re:Will someone please think of the XP users?

[digitalhermit]

Funny thing.. I ordered an XP netbook and wiped it to put Linux on it.. Why? The XP version had more extras (memory, better webcam) because of incentives.

Truly a case where everyone wins. Microsoft gets to claim their OS dominance. The retailer gets a sale. I get better hardware and the knowledge that the Beast of Redmond subsidized my purchase.