[pogson]

We know GNU/Linux numbers are hard to come by but M$ and Apple numbers are pretty good...



"

In fact, on linux.cnet.com/the client side, Windows accounted for 87 percent of all sales in 1999, a figure that will decline to 85 percent by 2004.

"On the client side, it's pretty boring. The story is, it's a Microsoft
world," Gillen said. Of the 13 percent of the market not buying some
type of Windows product last year, he said, about 5 percent purchased
an Apple computer running the Mac operating system.

Although that represents a 26 percent jump from its 4.5 percent
of the market the year before, Gillen said, "the Mac OS continues to be
a non-threatening element in the market."

"
h1. Linux closing in on Microsoft market share, study says - 2000
http://news.cnet.com...7.html?hhTest=1



"On the desktop, Windows's market share in new license shipments inched
up to 93.8 percent in 2002 from 93.2 percent. Linux's share of the
desktop also increased slightly to 2.8 percent from 2.3 percent. Apple
Computer Inc.'s Mac OS accounted for 2.9 percent of the total shipments
of 121 million client-operating environments." 2003

http://www.techweb.com/wire/26802826



"Microsoft currently has around 90% share of the client operating system
market with Windows but this will fall to 58% by 2007 as new devices
increasingly appear, IDC said." 2004

http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?p=5667



We are all fairly familiar with the new low-end notebook phenomenon where GNU/Linux is thriving. There is a market that is larger than that already well established and growing 20% per annum where GNU/Linux is on about 50% of units: thin clients. This market is expected to be on 10% of seats in a few years.

see http://www.via.com.t...ctedClients.pdf

"From an operating system (OS) perspective, proprietary OS rollouts see
high traction in countries where local thin client vendors employing
their own applications have a strong say, such as Korea and the PRC.
The "others" OS category (including Sun’s embedded firmware) was the
largest, at 34% share of the overall APJ market in 2005. Windows CE was
installed in 24% of all APJ thin client deployments, Windows XP
Embedded captured 22%, and Linux followed closely with a 21% share."

see http://computers.tek.../research/8013/

There is nowhere that GNU/Linux is not doing well and taking market share: servers, clients, thin clients, mobile devices. Get used to it. Competition has arrived in the OS market and it is here to stay. As long as you blindly follow M$ and keep sending them money, M$ will survive but their licence to print money is ending. They have nowhere to go but down, probably to less than 50% in a few years. This is good. They may finally have to sell on price and performance and not position on shelves in stores. I would not pay $1 for Vista. GNU/Linux works for me.

[pogson]

" A home user will certainly not get linux to run on his/her system just to save some money . "



In some markets, that is true, but, young people, folks buying a second or third PC, folks buying their first PC, etc. may not have a lot of cash and want the most bang for the dollar. One can buy a low-end new box for $200 or less. These price-sensitive folks do not want to put $100 for an OS and more for an office suite, etc. They will put up with some lack of smoothness to get a PC running for a lower price. Volume buyers like schools, governments, businesses with lots of low-end tasks needing a PC, libraries, kiosks, Internet cafes, all can see the cost of hardware going down and they want the price of software to fall too. The price of M$'s stuff does not fall because they have you locked-in and you will keep paying because you do not want the pain of switching. Lots of the newbies are not locked-in and can choose GNU/Linux wihout converting applications or files. There is no downside to GNU/Linux for them. I helped a school migrate to GNU/Linux. They were price-sensitive. XP was not even in the running because the cost per seat was double what I gave them. They had zero problems adapting to GNU/Linux. Well, a couple of small problems... but those folks with problems would have had problems with XP, forgotten paswswords and the like, nothing GNU/Linux specific. In fact, the school got a lot more out of their servers using GNU/Linux than just file/print/authentication. It was a rich educational environment with databases/management systems at no extra cost.

[piyushsingh]

This is the stats from one of the most reliable sources : http://marketshare.hitslink.com/


There is no way other than internet monitoring to get those details , why would it be favoring ms friendly markets ?
Its clear the two making major advances - vista and mac-intel. And what was wrong when i earlier said mac market share is going to increase a lot in years to come.

[piyushsingh]

eMJay said:

You're thinking about Linux like a westerner. To a westerner, Linux is something you download off the internet, and install if you choose to. To the emerging markets, Linux is a means of getting PCs affordable enough that the masses (who are poorer than you or I but outnumber us greatly) will reap the benefits of access to free information. But because of their numbers, they will form the majority of PC users in the long term, and they will mostly be using Linux. It's not that they will be downloading and installing Linux as we do; they will be buying it with ultra-cheap PCs or getting Linux PCs through the school system.

What you said above looks good enough on paper but things are very different in reality.

[pogson]

Referring to NetApplications:

+*"
There is no way other than internet monitoring to get those details , why would it be favoring ms friendly markets ?"* +



Look at their stats by country: 2% of hits come from China, so they are not counting millions of users of GNU/Linux in China where the government has promoted GNU/Linux in schools, government offices and businesses in order to tighten up on copyright. China has as many folks on the web as the USA but they give 30% of hits to the USA. That is not a fair sample. They need a population-weighting or some such technique to balance out that bias. It is not easy and that is not NetApplications primary business, giving folks information about visitors to their sites. I wish Google or Wikipedia or something like that would publish stats. Even then there is the bias in language. We do not surf Chinese sites and they do not surf ours, mostly. Apple has just opened their first store in China. There is no way 8% of Chinese hits would be MacOS.

[piyushsingh]

I guess the country wise usage statistics on that site are for paid user OR did you managed to sneak in somehow ? :)

[eMJay]

So in your reality, the billions of poorer people in the emerging markets can afford M$ and Apple based PCs? So what is your explanation for why billions still don't own a PC if the cost is so low in your view? And to why a low-cost approach is the only one that has thus far been successful at increasing PC usage in the emerging markets? Unfortunately, the best way to see the world is to actually go out there and see it for yourself. Their reality and yours are clearly not the same.

[pogson]

Oops! My mistake. I was thinking of http://w3counter.com/globalstats.php and writing about NetApplications/hitslink.com... Curse my memory.



It just goes to show how varied the results can be depending on the sample. W3Counter shows 2% for GNU/Linux with only 2% of hits coming from China and they show 4.6% for MacOS, quite different form NetApplications.



There is no way web stats can be perfect because many machines are not on the web and many modify the useragent string to allow access to certain web sites.

[piyushsingh]

billions still don't own a pc coz they cant do that. They may have the money but no environment to use a PC. you talk about reality - take south Asia only, do you expect people to own a low price linux based machine when there is no power to run it. Do you expect the billion poor people who have to earn daily to get daily food to run a pc (whether linux or windows). No my friend . The situation in stats isn't the real.

The billions poor cant get anything , slightly richer can get linux based systems in their range but their population is very less. The middle class, which is a major one can definitely get ms and apple based machines . And infact they are getting those only.
MSft have invested tons in these countries to promote technical education , you might not have heard of "dreamspark" , though its limited to west only at this time. Do you expect the Asus EeePC based machines to be a hit anywhere , no . Poor people cant even afford that, the middle class want more than what the Eee type machines give. The small group inbetween this isn't a major one.

[piyushsingh]

np . The stats vary from site to site. the link that i posted earlier was given by one friend here only who is a linux pro . Everyone knows about what the real scene is around them at their place. We can only read and know about the global stats.

[pogson]

One can see how folks live in some small way by visiting https://www.cia.gov/...os/ch.html#Econ

China is doing really well. Their GDP is $5300 per capita but it is growing by 11% per annum. They are at a stage where each year, they can afford to buy many millions of PCs.



Zimbabwe is in a deep hole in many ways. GDP per capita is $200 and decreasing.



On the other had the USA has 1.5 PCs per household...



With the current downturn, OEMs are swarming over the Chinese market trying to make sales. Dell, etc., are making more sales outside the USA than inside. Dell will sell GNU/Linux in China in bunches.

[pogson]

+*"
The billions poor cant get anything , slightly richer can get linux
based systems in their range but their population is very less. The
middle class, which is a major one can definitely get ms and apple
based machines . And infact they are getting those only. "*+

True, as far as that goes. Billions of poor can afford some schooling these days and access machines in schools. OLPC was set up to help that. There are lots of farmers/small businesses who are not middle class except that they own some land. They can use a very low-end machine to contact suppliers and markets. That gives them a large return on investment. Infrasturcture is a problem but many developing nations have high enough population densities that it is happening. Even the poorest regions on the planet can sometimes form cooperatives so that somewhere in the village will be an access point. Schools are widely used for that.



This is not to say that volume is currently large in the developing world but that it is on the edge of being large and is growing rapidly. I would say the BRIC countries have volume because they have mixed economies, decent education systems and public policies to make IT/FLOSS/Internet available. Other countries may only have potential in cities or towns with schools but the digital divide is becoming thinner with evolving technology. In my own case, I have worked for years in northern Canada which has Third World conditions due to climate/remoteness/language/culture but in the last ten years the Internet has made its way into communities and we in schools found ways to provide IT at rock-bottom prices (e.g. GNU/Linux on old PCs as thin clients). In fact, we, out in the bush, had better IT than some urban schools because we had IT in the classroom where it could be accessed as needed in a timely fashion. Folks who see IT as a cost and not as a tool hold back in many ways. They stick to that other OS and claim PCs are too expensive, for instance.

[eMJay]

I don't expect the poorest of the poor to have the ability to run a PC, especially those without electricity. But you're trying to paint all the poor with one brush - there are different dimensions to poverty. There are billions of poor persons who have access to electricity but can't afford a computer. Some have a roof over their heads but can't afford 3 meals a day- still poor. Millions with electricity could have afforded more if they had less children (the number of children they have is making them poorer than they would otherwise be, because of stretched resources). There are millions who own small enterprises that could benefit from ultra-cheap desktop and laptop availability. Electricity is subsidized in many poor countries just to allow more to have it and there are NGOs addressing that need. The initiative to bring ultra-cheap computers to poor nations is also subsidized by donor nations and local governments as well as NGOs and hardware manufacturers with vested interest in the success of the venture. Giving poor children access to laptops in school doesn't necessitate them having to have access to electricity at home. And don't assume PCs cost the same everywhere. The most basic PC on a US store shelf costs nearly twice as much in the developing world with the same features.



As for the middle class in emerging societies - yes, they will follow western traditions because they have financial access to it and will do pretty much whatever they see on cable tv. But even in the emerging markets the impact of a rising GDP doesn't actually filter down to everyone in the population. That's certainly true of India, China and Russia. Poor people there are still poor, while the wealthier and more educated are making more money than ever. The linux machine isn't to address the needs of those who can afford the brand name units.

[xrayjames]

This article prompted me to record my own 'OS War' experience I recently had: http://windowstalkbl...07/os-wars.html

[xpvista7]

windows wins hands down. next is mac os x.