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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!!!!
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?
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!
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.
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!
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.
"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.
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!
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.
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!
> 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.
Democrat delenda est
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!"
> 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.
Democrat delenda est
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.
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.
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.