Linux Now Has "Double" the Market Share of Windows
Statistics are a matter of your viewpoint.
If you consider NetApplications' data set, then Linux owns only about 1 percent of the desktop OS market and Windows has almost 92 percent. But if you consider all computing platforms, including mobile, than Windows has only 20 percent and Linux has 42 percent - and that would be in the form of Google's Android alone.
Goldman Sachs recently published a chart which shows the shift from Microsoft's 95 percents hare of the computing platform market in 2004, when PCs dominated the computing landscape, to just 20 percent in 2012. The forecast suggests that Microsoft will be able to grow its share back to 26 percent by 2016 and Android will shrink to 39 percent, while Apple's iOS and MacOS X will expand from 24 percent today to 29 percent in 2016.
Much of those projections are based on crystal ball evaluations and depend especially on Microsoft's ability to establish Windows Phone and Windows RT against Android an iOS.
In this case, they are doomed.
Since Longhorn project they bet the company on a monolithic monster-OS needing quick and infinite performance increase, in order to get people buying costly hardware and software upgrades. That was its business plan, simply put.
In the meantime the real world shifted to mobility, and MS struggled for a decade to patch the epic disaster the new kernel and the new managed code programming paradigm was, instead of using its resources to build ground up a way out from this heck or competing on emerging markets (web, embedded, mobile, or services and research like IBM did).
A PC used to cost less than a Mac and brought only a tiny fraction of the revenue per unit, but PC/Apple market share comparison was made since the beginning of time.
And Netbooks were counted as PCs even if usually sold at less than half the price of an entry level PC (and less or equal to entry level smartphones!)
Comparing market share is comparing market share, not volume or revenue, so it makes sense as ONE of the business metrics.
In this case, mobile devices has prices comparable to low end of PC offer, not something completely unrelated in price like bicycles vs cars.
What is more interesting is that now anyone including MS with VistaBob 8 Squarepants, is expecting to squeeze money from the web services (say advertising, say adware-based Stores, say built in adware in browser's search and desktop/metro entries), so a low end device might even (BE EXPECTED TO) generate more revenue per unit than an high end workstation expected to do real work instead of browsing or using Apps...
Time will say what business plan is better, but sticking on the news comparing market share is a perfectly legitimate metric to take in account by itself when looking at the IT trends.
Mmmmm..... Horrible nonsense Data from a source who can't count. So tasty. Lets draw conclusions based on it!
Very simple analogy and very true, compare Android to Windows 7 and it's a bit like comparing Ferraris to skateboards
If Android or iOS were meant to compete with desktop OS's, why would Google put so many efforts (with little reward until now) in CromeOS and why would Apple continue MacOSX ??? Why combine their market share ? They're complementary, with a rather limited overlap area in terms of usage...
valve with steambox, and ouya, and what else in the future... microsoft is just, alone. the giant is battling with packs of ant.. who will win? if they formed up in unity to create a pleasing and enjoyfull ecosystem, of course the ants and its costumer will win.