I still don't buy into market share stats
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| JaseP Mar 27, 2012 10:02 AM EDT |
I still don't buy into market share stats. Mostly, they come from web counters and are only valid as to those participating sites. Plus, those doing the counting may manipulate the numbers, sometimes something fierce. M$'s own marketing data put Linux at around 5% a few years ago. I can't imagine that this has decreased or that they were wrong. Reworking numbers from the web counter stats, or just fair estimates, based on numbers of netbooks sold with Linux, Linux downloads, etc., a market share of 7.5% globally makes more sense. But people keep repeating the 1% figure. There is a concerted marketing effort to keep the figure low,... because the real figure would be scary for some people. If Linux were only at 1%, there would be no marketing effort made to spread disinformation. |
| ComputerBob Mar 27, 2012 10:53 AM EDT |
I see desktop Linux as an alternative to the main operating systems -- not as a competitor. As an alternative, I don't worry about its mythical usage stats, because I'm convinced that the majority of computer users will probably never look for an alternative to the main desktop operating systems. But -- as someone who started looking for an alternative to the main operating systems in 2000 -- I'm very happy to say that Linux distros have been my main OS since 2006 (with Debian, since 2007). |
| Fettoosh Mar 27, 2012 10:59 AM EDT |
Has anyone noticed how much free advertising Apple & MS get in the media, like news programs, talk shows, and even various cartoons? There is lots of good stuff & benefits in FOSS to talk about, I wonder why they don't give, or it doesn't get equal share? The other day there was a discussion, I believe on Dylan Ratigan Show, about how much is spent on IT and if it is possible to cut the budget to reduce the debt. One guest suggested Open Source, which being used by many international companies and organizations, another who wanted to talk about the IPad III, jumped and said you have to be careful because there will be lots of jobs lost if we do that. Hmm, I wonder where the IPad is made and where the profits are being invested?!! |
| notbob Mar 27, 2012 11:26 AM EDT |
Holy cr@p!! I am sooo d@mn sick of this whole desktop issue. I wish LX would just ban any Linux article with any mention of "desktop". Linux will never be the dominate desktop and will never have anything remotely like a significant market share. Who cares!? If people want to be M$/iFoo sheep, fine by me. I think these writers keep harping on this issue because it's an easy subject and they want to be recognized as some sort of journalist or expert. It's all nonsense. |
| hughesjr Mar 27, 2012 11:41 AM EDT |
Actually, Linux has made a move on the desktop. However, if you buy a Machine from Dell with Windows Home on it and then install Ubuntu or Fedora later, that is a Windows desktop. These numbers are based on sales of new machines. Of course they all contain Windows or Mac ... until we can erase the trash and put a real OS on there :D Most high volume websites show 5% traffic to Linux (if android is included), not 1%. Now with OS X and Windows 8 shifting to a "tablet look and feel" OS, Linux / Android have a very good opportunity to grow ... and Linux will continue to grow. The only real issue is that MS Office is the defacto standard office suite and people have to be able to do Excel, etc. OpenOffice/LibreOffice are good for the most basic excel spreadsheets ... but anything advanced that was written in Excel is going to fail. That does not make OpenOffice/LibreOffice bad ... excel does not open Advanced OOo or LibreOffice Calc documents either ... the issue is that MS Office documents are what the advanced documents are written in now, so it is the standard. As more things move to shared clouds and more people use alternative office products, this reliance on MS Office will fade. Until it does, people will use Windows. |
| Bob_Robertson Mar 27, 2012 12:11 PM EDT |
Hughes, I agree. Microsoft Office is the real lock. |
| Koriel Mar 27, 2012 2:15 PM EDT |
I second what @notbob said. |
| JaseP Mar 27, 2012 3:06 PM EDT |
M$ Office will run in Crossover Office and WINE. |
| Khamul Mar 27, 2012 3:06 PM EDT |
If you don't care about Linux having significant marketshare (i.e. > 1%), then you also don't care about having working drivers, distros that work out-of-the-box without a lot of fiddling, etc. Maybe you should just switch to *BSD, because they don't care about marketshare either, or even BeOS. The only reason you're able to enjoy having drivers for nearly every piece of hardware under the sun (with the primary exception of GPUs and some WiFi hardware) is because of marketshare: there's enough other interested Linux users out there, as well as companies interested in selling to Linux users, that documentation is made available or drivers are open-sourced or donated by someone. With zero marketshare, you end up with something like the BSDs, where people can make claims about technical superiority but in reality their OS has extremely limited hardware support due to insufficient volunteers to write drivers and zero interest by manufacturers to support such efforts. Same goes for easy-to-use distros like Linux Mint; these things don't exist in a vacuum, and without sufficient support to drive advertising dollars or wherever they get their money, these people won't do the work necessary to bring these distros to us, so you'll just have to make your own distro. Good luck with that. As for stats, the only place to get reliable stats is from website stats, and that's biased by the userbase of the site in question. So the best place is probably Google itself (since just about everyone uses Google), but they don't release stats as far as I know. Even that's a little biased because they do have a competitor, Bing, and of course 99+% of Bing users are probably users of MS OSes, which by drawing some MS users away from Google is going to taint Google's stats somewhat in favor of non-MS OSes. Obviously, the stats of someplace like LXer.com or distrowatch.com are going to be heavily biased towards FOSS users. Quoting:Most high volume websites show 5% traffic to Linux (if android is included), not 1%. 5% with Android doesn't mean that much for Linux-on-the-desktop, or Linux period. Android isn't Linux, it's a fork of Linux, and most Android devices use non-Free drivers, making it impossible for you to install your own Linux software on them. It's a vast improvement over iOS and WP7 of course, but don't pretend that it's just as good as real Linux; it's not. Furthermore, Android is a phone/tablet OS, not a desktop OS. I know the Unity and Gnome3 fanboys refuse to believe this, but mobile devices and desktops(/laptops) are used for different things. You can't create content on a mobile device (or at least, not very well, and only an idiot would do so as a matter of routine). Quoting:Now with OS X and Windows 8 shifting to a "tablet look and feel" OS, Linux / Android have a very good opportunity to grow Linux is also shifting to a "tablet look and feel" in case you haven't noticed: it's called Gnome3 and Unity. And how does this help Android of all things? Android is a tablet/phone OS, just like iOS and WP7. Android has been growing, but the causes are arguable and many: it was early to market, it's cheaper than iOS, the carriers and handset makers like it better because it's mostly free and fairly standard (an app you buy in the Android marketplace will probably work fine on your phone, even though Android devices are many and varied, and having lots of apps available makes the platform attractive to buyers), and because they can customize it a lot unlike the Apple stuff (companies like having control and being able to differentiate their products--Android gives them some, WP7 and iOS give them none). WP7 is failing probably for many reasons: it's very late to the market, it doesn't have many apps (because it was late, and developers don't want to bother making a version for a platform with 1% marketshare), and MS has a terrible reputation. Anyway, desktop systems shifting to cr@ppy tablet UIs probably isn't going to help Linux much, thanks to the efforts of Shuttleworth and the Gnome devs. People might get annoyed and try out Linux, so they'll download the latest Ubuntu or Fedora (the #1 and #2 distros), try out Unity or Gnome3, and decide that OSX or Win8 aren't any worse than this and have better application support, so they'll go back to those. OSX, in fact, seems to be much more conservative than Win8, Unity, or Gnome3 as far as its UI changes in this tablet-UI trend. Sure, someone here will say, "what about KDE?" but as I pointed out before, the #1 and #2 distros (and #3, 4, etc.) all use Unity or Gnome3. Only seasoned Linux users even know about its existence and can go find a distro that supports it; everyone else just equates "Ubuntu == Linux". |
| flufferbeer Mar 27, 2012 10:05 PM EDT |
The above rambling-on aside, I think JaseP is spot-on. Same with notbob.
I find it a bit hard to believe from the stats "currently" made available that Linux Desktop Market Share (hmm...same acronym as Macro$ucks!) is much less than a good 5%+ estimate. And Why does anyone need to throw a hissy fit just WHAT EXACTLY the Linux Desktop's good MS really is!!!??? My 2c |
| Khamul Mar 28, 2012 1:26 AM EDT |
@fluffer: You say "probably greater than 5%", but then you have nothing to back up that reasoning with. "hughesjr" above says that high-volume websites show 5% for Linux and Android combined; Android is doing great in the mobile space, so it's safe to assume that Android is the bulk of that 5%, not Linux, meaning its market share might well be really around only 1%. There's a big difference between 5% and 1%; the former is 5 times the size of the latter. 5% might be enough to make manufacturers sit up and notice, and be better about providing drivers, documentation, etc. 1% is probably below that threshold. That's why we should care what the market share is. |
| notbob Mar 28, 2012 9:32 AM EDT |
I have to disagree with Khamul. The development of drivers does not depend on market share. Most driver software is developed by volunteers, just like Linux itself. I recall several years back when some French fellow wrote 160 video drivers. Why? He wanted to. The other reason is need. If you use Linux and are a programmer and don't have the driver you need, are you going to wait for some company to watch market share stats and develop a driver? No. You'll do it yourself. How good is the volunteer system? As I recall, Linux had better hardware compatibility than early W7. Think about who uses Linux. Sys admins, that's who. When you try for your computer science degree, do they teach you Windows? Of course not. You learn unix. The other reason mkt share stats are skewed is most Linux users don't give a fig if they are counted or not, for anything. I've never registered as a Linux user. Judging by the numbers, very few Linux fans have. Yet Linux continues to grow by leaps and bounds. What are there, now? Over 600 distros? One online article claimed the number of Linux distros now outnumbers the number of Linux users, a patently absurd statement. How many people in China use Linux? We have no idea. Probably never will. But, I suspect the numbers are very high. Sure, they pirate the heck out of Windows software, but Linux is free of any cost. I notice Asian based companies, like Brother, typically provide Linux drivers. BTW, Windows certainly is not free of any fiddling and/or tweaking, as users would have you believe. The other reason Linux will always be a viable alternative, regardless of market share, is a lot of people want a computer they can control, not a computer that controls them. That's why I finally changed to Linux ten yrs ago. I got damn tired of M$ and Windows compatible software telling me what I could and couldn't do with my own computer. I probably would have even written a couple drivers, but I suck at programming, though I continue to try and learn. And sure, drivers are often a little slow in coming, but come they do. I can't think of a single peripheral I have that does not function properly with my Slackware box, and Slackware is far from being a high market share distro, even if it is still highly regarded. So, market share numbers be damned. The only thing I need a M$ box for is streaming Netflix, that stupid Silverlight thing not having been ported to Linux, yet. Give it time. It will happen. |
| smallboxadmin Mar 28, 2012 11:49 AM EDT |
You all realize that you are responding to a DarkDuck article? |
| JaseP Mar 28, 2012 12:14 PM EDT |
Drivers are not dependent on market share,... true. But it helps. Counting or not counting Android is irrelevant. M$ had their stats at 5%+ before Android came on the scene. Most people tend to visit the same sites over and over. That means that unless you get reporting information from EVERY website, or at least the ones that everyone uses, you won't get accurate numbers. Plus, even if you DO get accurate numbers, you only get IP addresses, not unique machines running Linux, or unique users running Linux. I have 4 computer users in my home, and 12+ x86 machines running Linux. Compared to the number of computer users in my neighborhood (33 others,many with only 2-3 computers in their homes), that puts Linux users at about 11% for my community. When you total machines, assuming most households average 2.5 computers per home, but consider me with 13,... now Linux market share is 30%. If you just average IP addresses (assuming all are using broadband modems, 1 per household), our community puts Linux use at 7.6%. What is my point??? Accurate market share figures are impossible, because, while figures don't lie, liars figure. What needs to be corrected is the public impression that Linux or any FOSS, is rare, eccentric, not capable, not useable, not worthy of support or "beneath" other software. |
| Koriel Mar 28, 2012 12:15 PM EDT |
@smallboxadmin Thats OK, I didn't read the article anyway :) I just commented on what @notbob said as I agree with him, as a confirmed Slashdotter, articles are meaningless to us :) |
| BernardSwiss Mar 28, 2012 12:51 PM EDT |
Most web-counter stats are inherently biased and additionally often subject to covert agendas (GreyGeek used to itemize the historical revisionism/stats-"adjustments" performed by these actors) What I would like is a good explanation for why the Wikimedia OS Client numbers are so low. I can't see that they'd have any vested interest in biasing the numbers, or any inbuilt bias in their "market". http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOpera... Since non browser-stats methods suggest the numbers for Linux should be higher, one has to wonder if Linux users are for some reason less likely to use Wikipedia, than Windows or Apple users are? I don't like that explanation either. (On the other hand, the stats from Seti#home, Folding@home and the like tend to show very complementary numbers for Linux. But although usually clearly impartial, no one could describe those as unbiased.) |
| Khamul Mar 28, 2012 1:02 PM EDT |
@notbob: Do you not realize that marketshare also correlates to the number of volunteers available to write drivers (i.e. the volunteers are users of that OS)? Secondly, the BSDs and other really obscure OSes like BeOS (I'm sure there's people still using it) have puny marketshare, and they're famous for not having any drivers. I don't see any single fellow writing 160 drivers for those OSes. If you're a programmer using an obscure OS, you're either going to wait for that company to give you the documentation you need, or you're going to reverse-engineer a driver on another system. The second route is very tedious and time-consuming, and isn't used that much. You sound like someone who isn't a programmer or engineer at all. Yes, Linux had better compatibility than W7, largely because it supports a lot of older hardware that W7 doesn't. But also because it has lots of people working on it (== marketshare). Contrast that to OpenBSD; it has terrible hardware support. Where's the hordes of volunteers writing drivers for OpenBSD? It's simple: OpenBSD has much lower marketshare than Linux. Lower marketshare = fewer users = fewer people willing to develop drivers. BTW, system administrators generally don't have CompSci degrees. And yes, they do teach Windows at many Universities. Frequently, they teach Java on Windows. You don't need to register as a Linux user to be counted in web stats, you just have to visit a website with your browser running on Linux, and not change the user-agent string. That's why everyone looks at web stats for this information these days, because obviously sales numbers are bogus. @smallboxadmin: Who cares? As long as it generates good conversation, the initial article really doesn't matter. And like Koriel, I didn't read the article either. @JaseP: I'm not sure what the exact definition of "marketshare" is, but it seems to me that what's more important is how many unique Linux users there are, not how many unique Linux computers there are, although I guess if you're looking at it from a HW maker's POV, they might care more about the number of computers since someone who buys more hardware is worth more to them than someone who buys less HW (though of course this might very well depend on the exact type of hardware. However, I have to disagree that any FOSS is worthy of support. Companies have limited resources, some more than others. Not all of them are giant behemoths like Intel and MS. I work for a hardware company that has all of about 35 people. If someone wanted us to write a driver for them to run our hardware on, say, FreeBSD, we'd have to tell them no, because we don't have the resources to put together a new team to write a driver for a single customer that won't be buying very many units. Saying companies should spend far more on support than they're going to get back in sales is just inane. That's why marketshare is important: if we can show that there really are a certain number of Linux users out there, HW companies will see that they need to support it to improve sales. After all, telling 1 in 20 of your potential customers to take a hike isn't a good idea. But if they think that it only has the marketshare of Minix, they're not going to bother. |
| ComputerBob Mar 28, 2012 1:38 PM EDT |
Quoting:You all realize that you are responding to a DarkDuck article?No, I didn't read DarkDuck's article. In fact, I've only ever read one DD article, and that was plenty for me. I was responding to JaseP's first post in this thread. |
| JaseP Mar 28, 2012 3:18 PM EDT |
@ Khamul, I guess it depends on what type of hardware you produce for what OSes to support. If you produce desktop nerf missle launchers, then you probably won't suffer by having BSD geeks hit the road when asking for support. If you make hardware that's used in the server room, like telephony ATAs, ... different story. It's especially different if you use Linux in the embedded device you build. I can't tell you how many embedded devices that use Linux internally that I have seen that don't support Linux. That infuriates me.The French are particularly guilty of that (Archos and Parrot AR, the makers of the quadrocopter drones). Don't assume I was saying that all FOSS projects have merit, worthy of support. Some are garbage. I was not using the word ANY like that. I was using in the sense that some deem any and all FOSS as immediately inferior. In my experience, once you find the right FOSS package, it's the complete opposite. |
| darkduck Mar 28, 2012 6:58 PM EDT |
@ComputerBob, Khamul, Koriel, smallboxadmin: this is not my article, by the way.
You are all too prejudiced and do not read carefully. That's the issue with many people, so I understand. Ditto. |
| Khamul Mar 28, 2012 7:09 PM EDT |
Don't look at me, I never said anything good or bad about DarkDuck articles, or about this article; I only said I hadn't read it. |
| ComputerBob Mar 28, 2012 8:09 PM EDT |
@darkduck, apparently you're the one who does not read carefully -- I said that I hadn't read your article at all, and I didn't say anything bad about your articles. ;) |
| darkduck Mar 29, 2012 11:27 AM EDT |
@Khamul, ComputerBob: that's exactly what I mean. What is the point to discuss the article without reading it? It's like judgement of blind person about Picasso. |
| ComputerBob Mar 29, 2012 12:14 PM EDT |
@darkduck - As I already stated, I was not discussing your article - I was replying to JaseP's comment. Apparently, you're as careful a reader as you are a writer. |
| Koriel Mar 29, 2012 1:07 PM EDT |
As @CB said, @DD my comment was in response to @notbob's comment, I haven't read the article as it is simply not relevant, I was discussing the comments made by others, the article is not even required you could have posted up porn for all i care but it doesn't matter as I was discussing Notbobs comment. So explain to me who wasn't reading carefully? I for one know exactly who wasn't reading carefully as @CB has already noted. |
| gus3 Mar 29, 2012 2:13 PM EDT |
Could somebody diagram that please? I need pictures to follow all this. It's starting to sound like a 19th century Russian novel. |
| lcafiero Mar 29, 2012 2:15 PM EDT |
OK, so I actually read the article, and it's not written by Dark Duck. He's turned it over to someone else -- it's a reprint of an article by a web designer. That would be strike one right there. Strike two: It makes the same tired and false assumptions that all the doom-and-gloom, desktop-is-dead articles that appear quarterly or so make. It also ignores the fact, as many of the same writers do, that there's been an uptick in the use of the Linux desktop, from 0.97 percent in July 2011 to 1.40-something (1.43 maybe?) in Jaunary 2012. Not numbers to go gaga over, but it =IS= an increase. Strike three: Market share is always a false barometer of the quality and success of desktop Linux. Porsche has about a 5 percent market share in auto sales, but you're not going to find CEO Matthias Muller losing any sleep over the fact he doesn't have the other 95 percent of the market share. Why? Because Porsche is a quality product that's aimed at certain "users." On the whole, the product and company are a success, even though 95 percent of the world doesn't use it. Sound familiar? Linux has it nailed on the server side, on supercomputers, and in mobile. Does it really need to be a market share leader in desktop? |
| Khamul Mar 29, 2012 2:56 PM EDT |
We're not discussing the article, we're having a completely tangential discussion. Reading the article is not necessary. |
| Khamul Mar 29, 2012 3:04 PM EDT |
@Icafiero: It doesn't need to be a market share leader on the desktop, but it needs to have something that's viewed as significant, or else it gets zero support from hardware manufacturers. Ask the BSD fans how it feels to not be able to use all kinds of different hardware that we Linux users take for granted. I can plug in many wacky kinds of USB devices to my Linux box and they "just work". I can buy just about any motherboard or laptop and things mostly "just work". I don't have to worry much about some southbridge or audio chip not working. I'm pretty sure the BSD fans don't have that luxury. The only reason we have this is because we have sufficient marketshare and mindshare to accomplish this. Many drivers aren't even made by the manufacturers, they're made by volunteers, but those volunteers are part of that marketshare; zero marketshare means zero volunteers, as the BSD fans have found out the hard way. But many times the volunteers are able to get specs from the mfgrs, and the marketshare stats help convince them to release this information. The higher Linux marketshare is, the better support we'll get. Sure, Linux is doing great in servers, but that doesn't help me much if I'm trying to run it on desktop hardware, which is very different and much more diverse than server hardware (you don't use USB dongles on servers, nor do you use laptops as servers). Linux doesn't need to be the market leader by any stretch, it just needs enough marketshare to not be casually ignored. A mere 10% would be more than enough, and an uncontested 5% would be good. The Porsche analogy is highly flawed, since Porsche doesn't give their products away for free (they cost a LOT), and doesn't rely on free support from suppliers (they pay for their suppliers to support them, using the money they get from their high product prices). |
| Koriel Mar 29, 2012 3:06 PM EDT |
Everyone form a search team we have lost @gus3 :) |
| ComputerBob Mar 29, 2012 4:56 PM EDT |
Quoting:Everyone form a search team we have lost @gus3 :)I think he mentioned something about going to 19th century Russia. |
| JaseP Mar 29, 2012 11:26 PM EDT |
@ Khamul, Red Hat doesn't give their product away for free either... The difference is that their product is support, not the OS... And Red Hat's a billion $ company ... Hmmmmmmm.... |
| lcafiero Mar 30, 2012 12:19 AM EDT |
Actually, Khamul, if you're talking about market share, the Porsche analogy is perfect. You might want to keep an eye on what's being discussed -- market share -- and not whether it's free. |
| helios Mar 30, 2012 4:07 AM EDT |
and just to muddy the waters a bit more....the mention of the Frenchman who wrote 160 vid drivers. I believe it was roughly that number of webcam drivers he wrote. 3 AM and I am finally going to bed so I didn't Google it but yes, I believe it was webcam drivers, not video drivers. |
| JaseP Mar 30, 2012 8:38 AM EDT |
But he was a rare Frenchman,... Most French OSS guys will install it on some embedded device, deny for a time that it's Linux, and then finally not release enough info to hack the device (or lock it up with some Tivo-ization deal-e-o),... But of course, I'm just bitter towards Archos & the Parrot AR Drone people. Ce La Vie! |
| notbob Mar 30, 2012 7:35 PM EDT |
JaseP > But of course, I'm just bitter towards Archos & the Parrot AR Drone people. What!? Why!? What's the story, Jas? I was gonna buy a Parrot AR Drone, this Summer. Sure, they're iFoo centric, but I expect Linux hacks by time I can afford one. nb |
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