Evidence That Apple May be Behind GNU/Linux in the Desktop Market (Internationally)

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2010-10-24 07:37:48 UTC
Modified: 2010-10-24 17:21:48 UTC

Steve Ballmer's presentation slide
from 2009 shows GNU/Linux as bigger than Apple on the desktop

Summary: The company of gadgets and supposedly shiny things does not perform as well as US market surveys (which Apple helps fund) would have one believe

ONCE in a few months we remind people that Apple is too small a player on the desktop and hardly a threat to GNU/Linux. Apple's minuscule market share outside the United States and other Western nations (where Apple is also a niche but at least an existing one) ensures that GNU/Linux remains a very relevant platform on the desktop.

Those who pay attention only to Western surveys will certainly get a distorted picture. Net Applications is partly funded by Apple, as we noted in our previous posts about market share. It is therefore unsurprising that Net Applications makes Apple look good. Money can change everything.

Based on technical criteria, Apple is still catching up with GNU/Linux in some areas including package management. To quote a new post titled "The Lion has Lost the Magic":

While this is a good idea, it is far from being a new idea. Even if you ignore the fact that our mobile computers have had application stores for years, Linux was the first to create a centralized, graphical application for easily installing software on your computer with a single click. Beyond simple applications such as gnome-app-install, the Ubuntu Software Center was released over a year ago

There are other areas where GNU/Linux is technically ahead of Apple; marketing is no such area.

Interestingly enough, Robert Pogson shares additional details (with numbers) that may indicate good share for GNU/Linux relative to Mac OS X and maybe to Windows too:

3.89 million Macs

That’s all Apple managed to sell in a recent quarter while the world sold 88 million PCs. That’s 4%, folks, Rather modest compared to the 7% of W3Schools hits and the 5% of NetApplications. This makes me think GNU/Linux has a much larger share than NetApplications shows or that other OS is a lot less than they show.

[...]

So, Apple can crow about its wonderful recent quarter but GNU/Linux has overtaken them in PCs and smartphones. It’s time GNU/Linux crowed a bit.

110 Million non-”7Ã¢â¬Â³ PCs

M$ is boasting of selling 240 million licences for “7Ã¢â¬Â³ in the last year. 350 million PCs have been produced in the last year.

Needless to say, Microsoft's numbers are pure PR lies for reasons we explained before. Technically it may be right that Microsoft issues this number of keys, but this does not correspond to the number of PCs actually running Vista 7. Sometimes Microsoft just allocates unused keys to businesses and sometimes there are loads of new XP machines that get classified as "Windows 7" for reasons of convenience. Microsoft may have mastered the art of deception and any publication that prints those claims without scrutiny is simply not doing its job. ⬆

Comments

twitter

2010-10-24 14:45:57

A proper analysis of Windows 7's fortunes does not distinguish it from Vista but Pogson's analysis is excellent. We should not be fooled by the renaming of Vista and a new wave of channel stuffing/marketing. Four years after release, Vista has almost exactly the same set of problems it had on day one. Microsoft wanted to move the goal posts to harm free software and force a hardware "refresh cycle". They failed on both counts but were unable to avoid a user backlash or save retailers who got stuffed. I'm glad that people like Pogson are keeping track of the numbers and what they really mean.

Pogson credits business for the low adoption rate of Windows 7 and lack of choice for everyone but corporate purchasers for the shipping rate Microsoft is spinning. His numbers, 240/350, give the renamed hated OS a best case shipping rate of 68%. Shipping is not sales and sales is not use, so this best case translates to something considerably less in actual use. Pogson has updated his article by noting that it will take two years for Vista/Windows 7 use will not equal XP use at that rate. What would be really interesting is a chart of the Windows shipping rate fraction over the last ten years, my hunch is that it would show a continuous downward trend.

We've been here before. Vista's sales numbers fell off after it's first year and tumbled to nothing at the end of it's second. Something similar is happening to Windows 7, though they have taken advantage of dumping and fanboys to delay the drop off with channel stuffing.

The current purchase rate is channel stuffing and some fanboy use. Early adoption of Windows 7 was mostly people running away from Vista, the five percent of select markets that Vista owned flipped almost overnight to Windows 7. Recent promotion of Windows 7 by OEMs is good evidence that Microsoft managed to channel stuff them as part of their huge marketing drive to make the hated and renamed OS look like a success on it's fourth year of failure.

Mojave, Mojave, Mojave - look you really love what you hate!
Will

2010-10-24 17:03:46

I think the post may need one typo correction:

"There are other areas where GNU/Linux is technically ahead of **GNU/Linux**; marketing is no such area."

That's either supposed to be Apple, or I'm confused.

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2010-10-24 17:21:21

Yes, of course.

Evidence That Apple May be Behind GNU/Linux in the Desktop Market (Internationally)

3.89 million Macs

110 Million non-”7Ã¢â¬Â³ PCs

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