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

Let's all play Monopoly

[tuituiman]

Microsoft is steadily loosing ground... Okay, that's cool. It'd be nice to put them off their high horses. However, Microsoft has made a lot of mistakes in recent years (Vista being a huge one!) The thing about Microsoft is they have the money to do just about anything they want... So... Windows 7 is already shaping up to be a goody (I've already tried the Pre-beta m3, and although they're still using the Vista bones in the early versions, it's already gettin there)... And all other mistakes... Well a few ad campaigns to the basic end user etc etc... And they'll reconvert, or keep them. (By normal end user I mean the one's that have no clue when it comes to computers except to check e-mail etc etc.) And they'll remain Cemented on top. Even if Apple and Linux gain more followers, In all honesty I can't see Microsoft dropping off the top perch. Especially when the majority of Big business infrastructure is all Microsoft Server etc... (That's a huge market right there). So, good on Apple and Linux, but lets not kid ourselves people.

Re:Pulling stats out of thin air

[davie]

There is no such thing as a bogus fact.

Re:Many factors...

[tepples]

the netbook phenomenon

The unsuitability of Vista is an internet echo chamber, not a general opinion.

How would Windows Vista be made suitable for a low-cost subnotebook PC with 512 MB of RAM and a 4 GB SSD?

Re:Monopoloy

[earlymon]

It's unusual for an MP3 player to require a proprietary syncing app and refuse to work if the user chooses some other way to get the music onto the player.

This is not hair-splitting: with iTunes, you can choose to sync your iPod or to manage it manually.

The iTunes/iPod combo just worked - it wasn't difficult, it did just work - very easily. THAT is what gained it marketshare.

The evil (that I've heard of) with some Win revisions of the iTunes installer came later. The real complaint need not be iTunes itself - but that iTunes isn't open source, allowing for easy management of music from any OS. However, the problem with that is that iTunes is essentially an XML frontend/browser for Quicktime.

First came Quicktime on the desktop, then iTunes on the desktop - THEN came the iPod. And the iPod is using.... essentially iTunes/QT code - unless I'm very much mistaken, which I don't believe that I am.

To ask the iPod to easily xfer music - and perform music library management - outside of its core technologies is asking a very great deal.

We don't have to like the marketdroids responsible for some of the Win installer issues, or the mgmt for the OS ports decisions or for how they sic'd the lawyers about.

But the music xfer technology - be it by sync or manually (via the iTunes/XML browser) is really decent software in its own right.

Because it's not "damn near everyone else," it's damn near no one else.

Correct - because of the quality of the underlying software to begin with.

Often argued on /. - that it's the software quality that should drive things, coupled with the high criticism of the iPod software architecture. I find it ironic, that's all.

Honestly - complaining about iTunes lock-in with an iPod is like complaining about metric wrench lock-in with a German car.