Study Shows Linux at 30% of Netbook Market

I'd love to see Microsoft provide a credible source for that 93% number. Their previous number was based on retail sales in brick and mortar stores exclusively in the United States. In other words, it was a bogus number and the 93% figure is bogus as well.

32% of netbooks translates to just under 8% of the overall desktop market (11 million units out of 90 million). When you add desktop and full sized laptop sales the real number grows to about 10% of the total market, a number almost identical to Mac. That leaves Microsoft with 80%, still a near monopoly, but overall a big decline from where they were two years ago when netbooks first really hit the market.

Thanks to ARM and MIPS based netbooks their marketshare should continue to decline. Users who like Linux on their netbooks are likely to also want it on their larger systems. Microsoft is acting like they are genuinely afraid of Linux on the desktop and with good reason.

Credible source from Microsoft? Not likely unless it suited their ends... They generally just pull whatever number they want out of whatever dark stinky orifice is handy (IDC, Gartner, etc) that fits whatever their agenda of the moment is.

Lately IDC and Gartner haven't been much help to them in terms of reporting holding on to market share or recapturing it from Linux.

@caitlyn Ain't it a shame... Microsoft will have to pay for more unscrupulous shills... Too bad for them Mindcraft doesn't do market analysis...

Quoting:Ain't it a shame... Microsoft will have to pay for more unscrupulous shills...

Depends upon your perspective, solely. I hereby announce my availability to cook the books analyzing usage. MS, your shill is ready and waiting. All I need are checks that don't bounce*.

YBT

* Has your market share depleted to such an extent you can no longer pay your paid hands? Say it isn't true, it just can't be with a 93% share. Can it?

@TxtEdMacs You either aren't trying hard enough or you are trying too hard.

softwarejanitor,

You are right. Well I laid down the law: no more shilling and astroturfing until my checks are certified by a non-defunct bank*.

YBT

* But every time I create a new rule, they find a weasel hole around the intent**.

** See who says they are not innovated?

@TxtEdMacs Yes, you are right. Microsoft's one area of innovation has been in new forms of unethical or illegal behavior... What a dubious honor.

"Microsoft" and "credible" don't belong in the same sentence. Or even on the same planet :)

I have to agree, tuxchick. I now have MS shills coming onto my personal blog. I wouldn't have thought my readership was large enough to warrant such behavior but I guess I was wrong.

@caitlyn:

"You know you're near the target when you start taking flak."

@gus3 That is a very good way of looking at it...

@sj:

That's a very good way of looking at a lot of things...

tc,

Quoting:"Microsoft" and "credible" don't belong in the same sentence. Or even on the same planet

Even you would have to agree that is a GROSS over statement.

Could we not agree to be more fair and balanced? Would not the word oxymoron suffice?

YBT