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

[Hank Lambert]

You have to be careful when looking at the Vista sales figures. Microsoft
skewed the numbers and didn't think anyone would notice. The total number of
Vista "sales" include true box sales, OEM versions included on computers
from manufacturers who stopped offering XP as soon as Vista was released
such as Dell, HP/Compaq, and Gateway, and all free Vista upgrade coupons
given away for free when someone bought an XP computer. Comparing just box
sales, Windows XP heavily outsold Vista by this time in it's infancy.

Hank Lambert
KB4MTO
Certified Geek


-----Original Message-----
From: leaplist-bounces at leap-cf.org [mailto:leaplist-bounces at leap-cf.org] On
Behalf Of Damien McKenna
Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2007 12:41 AM
To: This is the Leap Main List
Subject: Re: [Leaplist] See? Linux actually dominates the WORLD market!

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/


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