04.22.11
Gemini version available ♊︎comScore Miscounts Linux
Summary: Another firm which tells people what to think of market share (and is paid by Microsoft) belittles Android
A report which gets quoted widely heralding the power of Apple is actually severely flawed and its source, ComScore, is one that we criticised before for spinning figures in favour of Microsoft after being paid by Microsoft several times. Such firms are choosing methods that decide what to count in order to get the required FUD — an endemic problem for sure and one that we remind readers to keep in mind. Neil Richards has just explained why this “comScore Report That Apple iOS Has Beaten Google Android Seems Flawed!” Here is part of his explanation:
I don’t understand this comparison as Android doesn’t even compete in the portable music player segment of iPod Touch. I also wonder if comScore took into account the ‘devices’ and not just the smartphones running on Android. I would very much like to know if comScore included Android-powered devices like Barnes & Nobel’s NOOK which hold a huge market share in the eBook segment.
In general, GNU/Linux market share figures (not just on the desktop) are a commonly abused area of statistics. Look at what Gartner is doing. One radical example are the flawed figures from IDC, which insists on counting revenue as “market share” rather than actually count boxes. Gartner and IDC too are both paid by Microsoft. █
“Lies, damned lies, and statistics”
–Benjamin Disraeli
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The Mad Hatter said,
April 22, 2011 at 5:47 am
‘Numbers don’t lie but liars can figure.’
Quote attributed to Mark Twain aka Samuel Clemens, American author. Don’t know that he said it, but it sounds like something he would have said. Like Winston Churchill he had a disturbing ability to cut directly to the point, and didn’t put up with fools.
Wayne