Windows Still Top Dog, Despite Linux, Mac OS X, Says Ballmer

Windows continues to dominate the operating system market unhindered, despite rival platforms such as Linux and Mac OS X, noted Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s Chief Executive Officer at the Royal Institute of Technology (Kungliga Tekniska högskolan, KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden on October 4, 2010.

Answering a question from a student, Ballmer allowed himself to be a “little cocky” and noted that there’s absolutely no need for Microsoft to retake the OS market away from rivals.

Microsoft’s CEO underlined that the vast majority of computers users are running Windows, over 1 billion according to statistics.

“I mean, honestly, for all the "blah blah blah" -- I'm the first one to admit when we -- and I'm not saying there's not going to be a lot of competition, but 95 percent (…) of the world's computers run Windows. They don't run Mac, they don't run Linux,” Ballmer said.

At the same time, Microsoft’s CEO did not dismiss Linux and Mac OS X as inferior. “I'm not saying that there's not good innovation happening in those areas, I'm not saying that,” he commented.

In addition, he also acknowledged that Windows is going to face more and more competition in additional areas, as computing evolves.

“And there is a lot of competition whether it's the move to new form factors, phones, slates, tablets, et cetera. There's a lot of competition out there,” he noted.

The latest statistics provided by Internet metrics company Net Applications indicate that Windows owns a market share of 91.08%, as of the end of September 2010.

Mac OS X is credited with only 5.03%, while Linux has only 0.85%, less than iOS which grew to 1.18%.

Microsoft’s last iteration of the Windows client, Windows 7, is a smashing success, having already sold in excess of 175 million copies worldwide, and climbing to a 17.10% market share.

“The key is actually to really think through broadly a lot of challenges at once. Where is hardware going? And how do you change the operating system to take advantage of next-generation hardware?” Ballmer asked.

“That's been area where we've done a good job, but where also there have been seams. And you see that in some of the good work that our competition has done has been innovating in hardware and software at the same time.”