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Windows Vista Climbs on All Fronts - Linux and Mac OS X FlatliningMicrosoft enumerates its competitors |
By Marius Oiaga, Technology News Editor
5th of October 2007, 14:55 GMT
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Microsoft's flagship products, Windows Vista and the Office 2007 System made available to businesses in November 2006, and to the general consumers in January 2007, have fueled Microsoft's growth in fiscal year 2007. The Redmond company is in fact crediting its $51.12 billion in revenue in the past fiscal year as driven by its main cash cows, the Windows platform and the Office productivity suite, Vista selling 55 million licenses, while the later pushed over 70 million copies in FY 2007. But still, the general focus is on Vista's performance compared
to rival operating systems and inhouse competitor Windows XP.
In the Annual Report 2007, Microsoft acknowledged its competitors. The Windows "client faces strong competition from well-established companies with differing approaches to the PC market. Competing commercial software products, including variants of Unix, are supplied by competitors such as Apple Computer, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Sun Microsystems. The Linux operating system, which is also derived from Unix and is available without payment under a General Public License, has gained some acceptance as competitive pressures lead PC OEMs to reduce costs. The Windows operating system also faces competition from alternative platforms and new devices that may reduce consumer demand for traditional personal computers," reads an excerpt from the Microsoft Annual Report 2007.
While enumerating its rivals on the operating system market, Microsoft failed to differentiate them in any manner. But the fact of the matter is that Mac OS X and Linux are the two operating systems natively perceived as Windows alternatives. However, both the UNIX-based Mac OS X and the open source Linux prove to be little competition for Windows Vista, according to statistics made available by W3Counter, which has the two operating systems close to flatlining in their race to catch up with Microsoft's latest client platform. According to W3Counter, Mac OS X grew from 3.71% in August to 3.74% in September. At the same time, the various distributions of Linux increased their market share from 1.37% to 1.38%. And while Mac OS X and Linux were jumping 0.03% and 0.01% respectively, Vista went from 3.66% to 4.01%. Of course that the statistics are in strict correlation with the Internet metrics mechanisms of W3Counter. In fact, data from Net Applications, while supporting the perspective that Vista is outpacing its competitors, offers a different view.
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User opinions: |
| Comment #1 by: ebernet on 05 Oct 2007, 19:17 GMT |  reply to this comment | Right. And according to W3Counter, 4% of the worlds Internet viewing public is from Latvia.........
W3Counter has no credibility. If they are to be taken seriously, they need to represent who their clients are and recruit companies for these stats. Otherwise, all you see is an amalgamation of stats from clients who choose to use them (W3Counter) for their personal statistics. For all we know, the Latvian Tourist Conference is their largest client... |
| Comment #2 by: martmart on 06 Oct 2007, 03:17 GMT | reply to this comment | Come on Marius, if you do some more research beyond the iffy W3Counter stats, you find that Apple’s marketshare has actually risen considerably over the last few years. Not surprising considering Apple’s Mac sales have been growing at around 33% over the last year or so compared to an industry average of only 9%.
Mac Laptop Market Share in USA is now at 17.6% and Apple is now Number 3 overall in USA after Dell and HP:
http://www.computerworlduk.com/technology/hardware/laptops/news/index.cfm?newsid=4771
According to NPD, Apple's retail notebook market share for June 2007 was 17.6%, a 2.2% increase over the same period last year when Apple posted a 15.4% market share.
According to data from research firm IDC, Apple's continued rise in computer sales puts it in third place overall among all computer makers. This is the first time since 1996 that Apple finds itself this high on the list of top selling manufacturers.
Dell took the top spot with HP coming in second place of total unit sales. With Apple taking the number three spot, Gateway and Acer round out the top five.
The good news continues for Apple - with increased notebook sales pushing it forward, the company now has an overall market share of 5.9%, up 1.1% from the 4.8% it posted this time last year.
In its most recent financial quarter Apple sold 1.76 million Macs, a 33% rise over what it shipped in the third quarter of 2006 and 2.5 times the industry-wide growth rate published by market-research firm IDC. Mac sales for the quarter marked a record for the company, topping the previous quarterly high of 1.61 million Macs shipped during the fourth quarter of 2006.
While there was a rise in desktop sales for the quarter - 634,000 units compared to 529,000 for the same period in 2006 - laptop unit sales skyrocketed 42% to 1.13 million portables. All told, 64% of the Macs sold during the quarter were laptops.
Mac marketshare at universities around USA up to 55%
http://www.twincities.com/business/ci_7030129?nclick_check=1
Mac use has surged at other U.S. colleges and universities:
Dartmouth College. The New Hampshire Ivy League school, 55 percent of freshmen this semester have Macs, compared with 30 percent in fall 2005.
University of Virginia. Fall 2006 found 20 percent of freshmen owning Macs. That's up from 3 percent in 2002.
Cornell University. The Ithaca, N.Y., Ivy League school Mac share has surged to 21 percent in 2007 from 5 percent between 2000 and 2002..
Wilkes University. This Wilkes-Barre, Pa., college is going all-Mac with university-owned machines. Most computer labs already are equipped with Macs. The university's 1,700-computer network will shift entirely to the Mac in the next three years. 11 percent of students have Macs.
Safari browser worldwide marketshare up 44% in last year - now at 5% and Firefox at 15%
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=0&qpmr=15&qpdt=1&qpct=3&qptimeframe=M&qpsp=104
Note that the Safari figures don’t tell the whole story as there are a significant number of Mac users running Firefox and even many running Internet Explorer for Windows under virtualisation or dual-boot. |
| Comment #3 by: Lost Angel on 06 Oct 2007, 14:33 GMT | reply to this comment | well, vista would climb, since it comes preinstalled...
office, unlike vista, is actually a pretty good product, so no wonder.
as to linux - everyone I know is considering since vista rolled out. |
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