The myth of 1% Linux market share.

[ted leslie]

Its no where near 10% or 8%.
In both neighborhoods i have lived in recently were I have talked to
neighbors about computers, I was only linux user.
In my family, cousins, uncles, parents, brothers, etc ....  3 linux
users (that includes my wife), 4 mac users, ~100 windows users.
In my job were i supported a linux boot CD/DVD to a work force of
100's (1000's but i actually only interfaced with 100's)  1 linux user
(a son of one of employees),
but that was of a populous made up of work at home people 80% female.
HP published something way back about 2% linux users in tech support.
Factoring outside NA, i would guess  +/- .5% , linux
desktop/MID/netbook use at 2%,
in NA i would guess 1% to 1.5% (+/- .5%).
If it was anywhere close to 8-10%, you wouldn't call up rogers , or
bell, or your bank , with tech support issues, and have them treat you
like you were from another planet.
As well ubuntu's download number, and other distro's even factoring in
that one download, can led to a few installs, etc, etc, it is hard to
get it above 2%.
You can believe it is 8-10%, but I am 99.9999% sure you are way  way off base.
If linux can dominate PVR, cellphones, MIDS, fridges, TV's, etc, etc,
yeah it can grow to 10+%, but you are going outside the "desktop" use.
The problem Linux has is, Vista was BAD, apple has marketing money,
they went from <1% to 6-8% (with help too from their i-crap products),
but Linux doesn't market, so they can't generally succeed in a space
that involved marketing to gain growth.
I bought Win7 because it is brutal using VISTA, and i have to use
Visio because linux has nothing even in the same universe as Visio
(unfortunately).
And, guess what, Win7 is actually "OK", and I can tell you its now not
a product that people have to escape from , if they are MS cool-aid
drinkers.
Win7 doesn't crash, its fairly fast startup/shutdown, sleep/hiber work
well, security warning are reasonable. Having said that, there is bugs
in Visio that they should fix,
but that is an app. issue. Bottom line is Win7 is very usable, and
Vista was not. There is no reason for your typical pablum feed Windows
user to now seek out a alternative.
Linux will only now gain traction in the small device (and embedded)
market, which is probably why Mark Shuttleworth is doing the desktop
gui changes to Ubuntu, its directed at that segment.
In fact, I would guess Linux and especially Mac may actually lose some
on the desktop going forward, as for the first time in a long time, MS
isn't selling pure crap now.
(and with intel catching up on the MID device chips, that opens up for
Windows too unfortunately, makes having to use Win on MIDS less of a
engineering issue).

Now having said all that, if Russia, and others really are
standardizing their country on Linux, well obviously that will led to
greater % of adoption in time as well.

anyways, its 2% (you heard it hear first)    :)

call up 500 people at random from a phone book of GTA, do a poll, if
you get more then 10 linux users in that poll, i'd be really
surprised.
That is a way you can easily get your answer.

tl


On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 11:25 AM, Ken Heard <ken-qoNZw2a/gFtBDLzU/O5InQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:
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> David van Geest wrote:
>
>> That said, estimating market share based on website stats is also
>> flawed.  This article contents that websites that pay to be counted
>> are more likely to be visited by Windows users:
>> http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2010/09/debunking-the-1-myth.html.  I'm
>> not sure the logic is airtight there, but we can certainly agree that
>> the numbers are likely to be skewed.  For example, Windows users could
>> make more web requests on average than Linux users..... I don't think
>> that's true, but it's an obvious example of how the stats could be
>> biased.
>
> Before my original post I had not read the article referred to above but
> had read some of the references in it which I found independently, in
> particular those relating to Steve Ballmer.  The points I made are
> reinforced in this article and the comments thereon.
>
>> The article above also quotes Steve Ballmer and Microsoft estimating
>> Linux share at 8%, and saying Linux is a competitor.  I'm not sure it
>> that's what you're referring to,
>
> Yes.
>
>> but it would seem that MS does indeed
>> see Linux as a competitor and isn't underestimating its market share.
>
> All in all, I think my guess of 10%+ is closer to the mark that
> Ballmer's 8%.  Also of interest is that the Linux market share is
> "significantly" above Mac's, but software, drivers, etc., for Macs are
> eagerly supplied by manufacturers.  Why?  Because Bill Gates at a
> critical moment kept Mac afloat so that he could claim that Microsoft is
> not really a monopoly.
>
> Until Linux gets more respect, we Linux users have to fight to be able
> to use hardware.  The survival of so many manufacturers depends on that
> all-important Microsoft certification; in addition they cater to Mac
> with Microsoft's tacit approval.  Because however of the power of
> Microsoft, many probably feel that if they cater to Linux as well they
> may suffer financially -- a sort of self-regulation is probably at work
> here.
>
> Ken Heard
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