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Apple Devices To Outsell Windows For First Time Ever In 2013
zacharye writes "Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets have long been considered the future of computing and a new projection from market research firm Gartner shows just how important the mobile market has become. According to the firm's estimates for 2013, Apple devices will outsell Windows devices for the first time this year. The estimate takes into account sales of Apple's iPhones, iPads and Mac computers as well as desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones powered by Microsoft's various Windows operating systems..."
It is interesting, though, that after all these years of /. saying that "20XX is the Year of Linux on the Desktop," Unix-Like devices actually account for more than half of computing devices.
Granted, they aren't as FOS as we might have hoped for.
Obviously consumers are mostly staying away from Windows 8, which is slowing new PC sales... and in all honesty, there isn't an urge to upgrade PCs every year or two any more. We've reached a point of maturity in desktops and laptops, in terms of memory and drive space... the sweet spot seems to be around 8GB of RAM and 1TB of drive space. 90% of consumers do little more than surf, get e-mail and play games. Gaming hardware really hasn't vastly improved the user experience in a few years, even low end cards deliver nice graphics and performance on 1080p monitors.
Combined with customers' concerns over the "Modern UI" in Windows 8, and there just isn't a lot of compelling reasons for consumers to purchase new equipment.
Likewise... IT departments have likely slowed hardware refreshes in light of Windows 8. Many took a year or two to adopt Windows 7, which was a no-brainer upgrade after struggling with Vista (which many IT departments skipped). Again... nothing compelling to move into Windows 8 and integrate it into their common office environments, and hardware requirements of current software hasn't demanded more ram than most companies already have deployed.
Not so fast! If we are going to start comparing counts of "Devices", the clear winner is neither, but Linux.
Windows still rules the Desktop, and Apple the MP3-players, but all those millions of routers, TVs, Blu-ray players, TiVos, GPS units, Android devices and even kitchen appliances....
Linux *Devices* clearly outsell any other comparable platform, by a huge margin.
You know they should have taken a page out of their own success story. When IBM came knocking they bought an operating system and created MS-DOS out of it. They should have bought Nokia and gotten behind Maemo and put their own spin on it. Maybe a linux kernel with a MS proprietary system on top would have worked for them like Darwin under OS X did for Apple. No, they had to try to reinvent the wheel and it had a flat spot on it.
But that's not what the masses want, you're a nerd (admit it you're on slashdot) and what you want is a microscopic market niche. Steve was right.
The Gartner report never projects the sales of iOS and OSX devices exceeding those of Windows devices. Those projections cover the years 2012 through 2017, so I'm not sure where that sensational conclusion came from. It's also worth noting that the projected sales of Windows devices is continuing to increase, albeit not at the same rate as iOS/OSX, each year.
Not that I would place much value in these projections. The volume of sales of mobile phones suggests that people will be replacing them every 2.4 years, and that's assuming that everyone over the age of 15 owns one. (If you assume that fewer people own mobile phones, the replacement rate must increase to less reasonable levels.)
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/03/nobody-cares-what-you-think-about-their-phone/
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.