[Leaplist] See? Linux actually dominates the WORLD market!

[Damien McKenna]

On Sep 17, 2007, at 10:42 PM, patrick wrote:
> Figures from IDC, in May 2007, show Linux accounting for 12.7 per cent
> of the server market by revenue compared to Windows with 38.8 per cent
> of the market. Most of the remainder is Unix, although IBM mainframe
> still has a share.

Statistics, gotta love them.  And hate them.

The reason that traditional UNIX accounts for 50% of the revenue is  
simply cost - how many people are going to buy a traditional UNIX  
machine or mainframe for a few hundred or few thousand dollars?  Not  
many.  At the low end of the market Sun sells some attractive servers  
that have a very good price compared to the same equipment with  
either Windows or Linux, but most others do not AFAICS.  And I know  
that Apple isn't doing too well with their limited product range to  
account for that much.

A more telling number would be units sold.  Given that the same  
server hardware will run Windows just as well as Linux, they are very  
easy to compare.

> However, these figures are for servers shipped from the major hardware
> vendors (HP, IBM, Sun, Dell, etc) and omit some important facts. In
> particular, the number of "constructed servers" is very large and they
> nearly all run Linux.

"Nearly all"?  I'd like to see some evidence for this.  How about  
companies that have either unlicensed/pirated installs of Windows or  
another licensing deal to cover the OS install?

> How large? Well Google, for example, builds all its own servers and
> is estimated to be the fourth largest builder of servers in the world
> - after HP, IBM, and Sun. It's not the only ISP that does this, but  
> its
> activity is so great that it distorts the market stats.

Yes, which is why you use things like the median instead of average,  
etc.

> Linux has two very important advantages for developing economies
> such as China, India, and Brazil:
>     * It can be used to establish a local software industry with local
> skills.
>     * The cost of adopting it is lower by far than any alternative.

Ditto for any OSS OS.

> I have insight from dozens of reports around the world, and Microsoft
> Corporation counts units 'shipped', not units 'sold'!  Vista  
> pipeline is
> clogged as consumers walk away from that utter disaster.  No growth
> there, and, in fact, a huge amount of returned shipments from the  
> pipeline!

Vista retail sales are very low, but it is still the dominant OEM OS  
due to being the current edition and I foresee it only improving  
after SP1 is released, especially with businesses.

-- 
Damien McKenna - Husband, father, geek.
damien at mc-kenna.com - http://www.mc-kenna.com/