J V
June 18th, 2010, 10:28 PM
I'm not going to say I've found the answer, I'm just going to give a good argument that most estimates of Linux market share are far lower than what is actually the case.
There was also little to no original research :) - just pointing out some things...
Wasn't this already done?
Yes, but so far, none of the data adds up. If you google "Linux market share" almost all of the results state Linux has a 1-2% of the current market share.
These claims are made based on a report, (Ironically, partially aided by Microsoft, see point 2) that showed only 1.24% of web browsers ran from Linux. Indeed, even Wikipedia claims this value is accurate.
There are several reasons that these stats are skewed.
The test was done on western websites. Unfortunately, most Linux users live in non-US, western European countries: India, China, Russia, the parts of Africa that actually have computers, Latin-America (Particularly Brazil)
Certain websites that the test was run from wouldn't be particularly Linux friendly. The list of "Sponsors" flicks through, among other things, microsoft.com, and people only end up there if they work for Microsoft or just got a BSOD
Edit for clarification: Microsoft.com was one of the websites they got their statistics from. An incredible abundance of Microsoft.com traffic would be from Windows (Mainly support requests)
Linux users may mask their operating system/user agent because certain websites don't function with Firefox/Chrome
So how do we calculate Linux market share?
We don't. We can't.
Market share is calculated by dividing the amount of software sales running by the amount of hardware sales.
Manufacture of hardware is disclosed, things like processors and motherboards are an accurate description of the amount of desktop computers available in the world (Though you must make some assumptions that people buy a new computer on an average of so-and-so years)
Manufacture of software is not often disclosed...
Apple discloses it's sale of Macs, but Linux doesn't track it's sales... It doesn't work that way.
Of course, we could calculate the Linux+BSD "Sales" by subtracting Apples sales and Microsoft's sales from the total hardware sales.
The problem with that, Microsoft doesn't disclose the amount of Windows sales. Microsoft has a monopoly on accurate market share stats.
Show me the stats!
So, if Microsoft is the only faction that knows how the market share is, how do we figure it out?
In February 2009, Steve Balmer presented a report on market share.
In this report (Fig. 1), Microsoft, states Linux has around a 4% market share.
The world is stunned.
Now we may not be able to tell what the Linux market share is today from skewed browser tests, but we can sure as hell tell what the trend is! Up up and away!
Between 2004 and 2009, Linux on the desktop tripled.
That's an average 25% increase per year.
That would put Linux on the desktop at about 5.5% now, June 2010...
2023 is truly the year of the Linux desktop with 91% penetration (At least at this rate): It will pass the tipping point in 2018 (29.8%) where it will hopefully get the proverbial ball o' vendor support rolling.
Assuming Microsoft wasn't telling the truth (GASP) we can expect to shave 5 years off those numbers...
Discrepancies
Can we trust Microsoft? History says no. But lets see all the ways Microsoft could skew the data from the conference where this is based on.
Activation: These stats could be taken from number of computers sold, or they could be taken from number of computers phoning home in the last month. Don't know about you but I was a windows user before I switched to Linux
Piracy: Can Microsoft count pirate copies of windows? They can count torrent downloads, and add them to their sales no doubt. But they can't really know how much of that gray area is Linux and how much is Pirated. Unless, you know, they are using one of the 3 different back-doors they installed in every version of Windows.
Extra purchases: Microsoft is disliked for it's policies of making people pay for windows twice at the drop of a hat (Hardware upgrades, bad disc etc) this could also inflate stats.
Microsoft may not have accounted for ancient versions of windows, if it counted windows 95 in those stats it would have brought
All we know now is that Linux will have a majority market share some time in 2020. Hopefully, Microsoft was full of **** and we get it sooner :)
Why should we care?
Because there are no games for Linux!
Ok, that may sound stupid, but you get the principle, until we break the vicious cycle, we won't get vendor support. And we like vendor support (Looks at ATI users)
Sources
The only long-term (http://www.berkeleylug.com/?p=43) report on the Linux trend I could find.
Market share research: (http://marketshare.hitslink.com/Default.aspx) hosted on Microsoft IIS ;)
Microsoft accidentally discloses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY) 3 separate "Keys", one probably belonging to the NSA
There was also little to no original research :) - just pointing out some things...
Wasn't this already done?
Yes, but so far, none of the data adds up. If you google "Linux market share" almost all of the results state Linux has a 1-2% of the current market share.
These claims are made based on a report, (Ironically, partially aided by Microsoft, see point 2) that showed only 1.24% of web browsers ran from Linux. Indeed, even Wikipedia claims this value is accurate.
There are several reasons that these stats are skewed.
The test was done on western websites. Unfortunately, most Linux users live in non-US, western European countries: India, China, Russia, the parts of Africa that actually have computers, Latin-America (Particularly Brazil)
Certain websites that the test was run from wouldn't be particularly Linux friendly. The list of "Sponsors" flicks through, among other things, microsoft.com, and people only end up there if they work for Microsoft or just got a BSOD
Edit for clarification: Microsoft.com was one of the websites they got their statistics from. An incredible abundance of Microsoft.com traffic would be from Windows (Mainly support requests)
Linux users may mask their operating system/user agent because certain websites don't function with Firefox/Chrome
So how do we calculate Linux market share?
We don't. We can't.
Market share is calculated by dividing the amount of software sales running by the amount of hardware sales.
Manufacture of hardware is disclosed, things like processors and motherboards are an accurate description of the amount of desktop computers available in the world (Though you must make some assumptions that people buy a new computer on an average of so-and-so years)
Manufacture of software is not often disclosed...
Apple discloses it's sale of Macs, but Linux doesn't track it's sales... It doesn't work that way.
Of course, we could calculate the Linux+BSD "Sales" by subtracting Apples sales and Microsoft's sales from the total hardware sales.
The problem with that, Microsoft doesn't disclose the amount of Windows sales. Microsoft has a monopoly on accurate market share stats.
Show me the stats!
So, if Microsoft is the only faction that knows how the market share is, how do we figure it out?
In February 2009, Steve Balmer presented a report on market share.
In this report (Fig. 1), Microsoft, states Linux has around a 4% market share.
The world is stunned.
Now we may not be able to tell what the Linux market share is today from skewed browser tests, but we can sure as hell tell what the trend is! Up up and away!
Between 2004 and 2009, Linux on the desktop tripled.
That's an average 25% increase per year.
That would put Linux on the desktop at about 5.5% now, June 2010...
2023 is truly the year of the Linux desktop with 91% penetration (At least at this rate): It will pass the tipping point in 2018 (29.8%) where it will hopefully get the proverbial ball o' vendor support rolling.
Assuming Microsoft wasn't telling the truth (GASP) we can expect to shave 5 years off those numbers...
Discrepancies
Can we trust Microsoft? History says no. But lets see all the ways Microsoft could skew the data from the conference where this is based on.
Activation: These stats could be taken from number of computers sold, or they could be taken from number of computers phoning home in the last month. Don't know about you but I was a windows user before I switched to Linux
Piracy: Can Microsoft count pirate copies of windows? They can count torrent downloads, and add them to their sales no doubt. But they can't really know how much of that gray area is Linux and how much is Pirated. Unless, you know, they are using one of the 3 different back-doors they installed in every version of Windows.
Extra purchases: Microsoft is disliked for it's policies of making people pay for windows twice at the drop of a hat (Hardware upgrades, bad disc etc) this could also inflate stats.
Microsoft may not have accounted for ancient versions of windows, if it counted windows 95 in those stats it would have brought
All we know now is that Linux will have a majority market share some time in 2020. Hopefully, Microsoft was full of **** and we get it sooner :)
Why should we care?
Because there are no games for Linux!
Ok, that may sound stupid, but you get the principle, until we break the vicious cycle, we won't get vendor support. And we like vendor support (Looks at ATI users)
Sources
The only long-term (http://www.berkeleylug.com/?p=43) report on the Linux trend I could find.
Market share research: (http://marketshare.hitslink.com/Default.aspx) hosted on Microsoft IIS ;)
Microsoft accidentally discloses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY) 3 separate "Keys", one probably belonging to the NSA