Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

OpenOffice Tops 21% Market Share In Germany

Posted by kdawson on from the camel's-head-and-neck dept.

hweimer writes "A novel study analyzes the installed base of various office packages among German users. (Here is the original study report in German and a Google translation.) While Microsoft Office comes out top (72%), open source rival OpenOffice is already installed on 21.5% of all PCs and growing. The authors use a clever method to determine the installed office suites of millions of web users: they look for the availability of characteristic fonts being shipped with the various suites. What surprised me the most is that they found hardly any difference in the numbers for home and business users."

2 of 252 comments (clear)

  1. 99% of non-techie readers would say "open what?" by mykos · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    This survey is a pretty big pill to swallow. I am pretty sure that nearly all the non-IT people I know would have no idea what Open Office was, and I'm sure there are many others who would feel the same here on Slashdot.

    Of course, anecdotal evidence isn't a great benchmark, but come on...

  2. Re:99% of non-techie readers would say "open what? by robot256 · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    So you admit that your opinion is worth even less than a flawed survey of actual users? Thanks for sharing.

    I have seen OpenOffice gaining plenty of market share--frequently installed alongside MS Office on campus computers and such. It's true that non-techie people are still clueless, but the ranks of the techies are getting larger with every generation. So there's some anecdotal evidence to counteract your anecdotal evidence, and we're back to square one.

    Oh, and don't forget those markets in which Linux has a large market share (like China) where OpenOffice is one of the only viable options.