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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."
This is good news. It surely means the year of the Linux Desktop is impending.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
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.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
OMG! Micro$oft is about ready to go under!!!! There's going to be huge consequences for our economy!!!! Send Steve Ballmer to DC in his private jet to throw some chairs around and get us $25 billion immediately!!!!
"The more home users who are online, using Macs and Firefox and Safari, the more those shares go up,"
Let me get this straight...if more people use a browser, then there are more people using that browser? Brilliant!
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?
But then you have to factor in the people that do things like setup firefox to report its running IE6 on Windows XP to get web pages to display correctly (remember when MS would send broken CSS Pages to non-MS browsers a few years ago?). And 4 million SubNetbooks is nothing. Think about how many windows desktops have been sold, over the last 5-6 years that are still being used! (and you can get the EEE PC with XP on it)
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
the year of... windows not on the desktop!
You're right. Windows should stay where it belongs--on servers and in embedded systems.
This guy's the limit!
There's the general opinion of Vista's unsuitability, the rise in Macs, the netbook phenomenon, the economic downturn slowing hardware turnover, all leading to fewer Windows boxes out there. The question is whether MS has any chance of reclaiming them with their even-fatter Windows 7, or accelerate the downturn.
Now if some Large Visible Company decided to jump off the Microsoft Upgrade Treadmill in favor of Some Other OS, *THAT* would be a story...
SCOX(Q) DELENDA EST!!
When people realize there are alternatives, they start to look for MORE of them. Firefox specifically is proving that one doesn't need MS to do normal activity. When no website "breaks" because one is using FF, they subtly say "wow". When they learn of new features (tabs) in IE and realize that those were available in FF long before MS got to them, they go "wow".
This would cause people to look at what they do, not what they use to do it, and see if what they need is available elsewhere.
The next big push should be OpenOffice. My kid comes in and shows me her "Powerpoint" (her words) and I know that I haven't put MS Office on her computer, then I point out that it isn't "PowerPoint" but a presentation. She realizes it isn't Microsoft Office and I now have someone who can tell her friends "I didn't use MS Office" (and she will too!).
When people realize they can surf the net (already there) and make "PowerPoints" and "Word Documents" and "Excel Spreadsheet", it will increase the options for discovering that one CAN get along quite nicely without Microsoft.
I've long said that 2007-8 is going to be the beginning of the end for MS. The writing is on the walls, it is just a matter of time before the whole thing collapses.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Linux seems to have completely failed to capitalize on Vistas unpopularity, still having less than 1% market share.
These type of stats always ignore the bulk of Linux devices. There are more than 300 million Linux devices sold every year. The total number of Linux devices outnumbers everything else by a wide margin.
However, it is nice to know that Microsoft still supplies 100% of all Windows systems...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Not "Windows" Market Share, but specifically Vista Market share only, after all, it's their shiny new thing being forced down all of out throats.
(Yes, I mean to Exclude counting any WinVista Downgrade licenses in the %, and show the *Actual* market share % use of WinVista in PCs since the WinVista release to date.)
Those stats might be more interesting and possibly more insightful to MS losing market share to other PC OS options.
Grouping *EVERYTHING* marketed as "Windows" into one pool is not statistically transparent.
I argue that many would NOT consider WinME, Win2k, WinXP, WinVista, or even Windows Mobile to be the the same category, etc...
Yet, the cited study places a FreeBSD based OS at 10 times the Linux market share.
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):
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:
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?
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
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.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
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...
The story is about online market share, not market share period - they came up with these results by tracking certain websites to see the proportions of the operating systems of their visitors. As the article explains, they think Windows share dropped because there is a higher concentration of Windows PCs at work than at home, and over Thanksgiving, many people weren't at work. Notably, this study doesn't say anything about the total market share of Windows or any other operating system, as seems to be implied in the headline and most of the summary.
Um, iPhones sold about 11m now, worldwide, which would help push the EEPC effect down.
On top of that, Mac sales are also about 10m, worldwide.
So even if Linux is growing, Mac/iPhone is growing faster.
GPL Deconstructed
"Windows' share typically falls on weekends and after work hours, as users surf from home computers, a larger percentage of which run Mac OS X than do work machines."
So, what they are saying is that people would rather use something else, and do so at home. In effect, people don't want windoze but are forced to use it at work.
Windows sucks and there's your proof.
The thing about Microsoft is they have the money to do just about anything they want...
Funding isn't their problem. What's hurting Microsoft is pervasive management incompetence. This is the kind of thing that can happen when the money comes in too easily for too long.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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
-- Kevin C. Redden kcredden@ gmail 392992
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:
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.
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
No one is buying a GNU/Linux netbook and then torturing themselves with a $200 XP install.
No, but a lot of people buy the cheaper linux netbook, and then install a pirated xp on it.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
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)
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.
What's hurting Microsoft is pervasive management incompetence. This is the kind of thing that can happen when the money comes in too easily for too long.
It's a corporation thing - when managers start surrounding themselves with their pals and ass kissing flatterers instead of the right people for the job. This cancer eats at all companies from the inside, and it's just human nature. There are ways to deal with THAT kind of thing, but no one has the balls to do it.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
That's true with nerds too. Why, just the other day, I was Yahooing a javascript method...
See what you did there? "Why, that fool doesn't use Google!" The mainstream - and yet still the coolest - search engine. Because it works the best.
Popularity does not always have a negative feedback loop.
I know this is gonna hurt, but I'll bite.
Video editing. DVD authoring. MP3 Encoding. Video Capture. HTPC. Signal Processing.
The list goes on for processor limited tasks that new hardware continues to improve. To say that you only use your PC for gaming shows your age and naivete.
My Babylon
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.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
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.
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.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
Yes the downfall of all those companies is Microsoft. What else? Oh wait - Fannie and Freddie - guess which OS was installed on most of their computers? Windows? There you go, MS causing another downfall. All of the auto makers were running Windows too, and look what happened to them! Most of the people who have had their houses foreclosed on, guess which OS they were running. Windows! Again the evil MS at work trying to destroy all of us!
But seriously, Microsoft does just fine screwing up on it's own merits. It doesn't need you attributing every single evil in the world back to it.
"But this one goes to 11!"
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?
Macs used to have 15% to 20% marketshare in the early 1990's. Now they have less than 10%, when they had the Mac Clones they really sold a lot of them. If Apple allowed Mac Clones again, I am sure Macs could easily capture that 20% all over again.
Revisionist history! I hade a couple Apple clones (out of morbid curiousity, and they both sucked). MacOS market share at that time was at an all-time low and the clone market nearly killed the company. Steve Jobs came back, killed the clones, introduced the hockey-puck moused iMac, and that recovery is now legendary, despite the worst mouse ever created.
If you mean that OSX is a descendant of FreeBSD then you are mistaken. OSX is a descendant of Mach, which shares a distant common ancestor with FreeBSD.
~ I am logged on, therefore I am.
No, no, no. It's pronounced "DO-Apple-Y."
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
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. ... 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
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
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) ... 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
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
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
OK, Microsoft makes a bit more than a billion dollars a week in gross revenue, and more than $930 million per week in profit.
Apple, on $32 Billion in revenue, makes a bit more than $11 billion in profit. Microsoft makes almost as much in a week as Apple does in a month.
Novell plus Red Hat? The two major Linux companies spend a year generating the revenue that Microsoft generates in a week and a half or so.
Google generates less than a third of Microsoft's revenue, and their gross profits are under $10 billion, less than Apple's.
Anyone who thinks that Microsoft doesn't have the resources to hire who it needs to in order to deal with changing market conditions is nuts. A few years ago, Intel was supposedly on the ropes. They changed direction, killed a few processors, and fairly quickly released the Core Duo processors and turned the company around. AMD was left flat-footed, and are only now even coming close to regaining their footing. I don't really care much whether Microsoft does, but I don't think people realize the difference in scale and the difference in resources that can be brought to bear. If Windows 7 works and gains acceptance, it won't matter that Vista had huge problems. And they're spending a ton on stuff like Sharepoint, which is a relatively unique product - and good enough to get a ton of organizations to tolerate vendor "lock in" to get the feature set.
Don't underestimate how much money they have and how many talented people they do have in much of the company. You can certainly compete with them and make money, but it's unlikely that even Google will be able to dislodge them any time soon.
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.
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.
You are mistaken. OS X's kernel is a hybrid of Mach and FreeBSD (uses FreeBSD's VFS, processes, sockets, etc), with some significant additions developed by Apple as well. Also much of OS X's POSIX-y userland is FreeBSD-derived.
-- listen to interesting music, support independent radio... WPRB
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.
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.
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.)
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
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.