Posted on 07/03/2007 6:54:01 AM PDT by ShadowAce
Microsoft's Windows platform is losing traction with application developers in North America, according to a survey by Evans Data.
A survey this spring of more than 400 developers and IT managers in North America found that the number of developers targeting Windows for their applications declined 12 percent from a year ago. Just 64.8 percent targeted the platform as opposed to 74 percent in 2006.
"We attribute [the decline] largely to the increase in developers beginning to target Linux and different Linux [distributions]. Both Novell and Red Hat are the two dominant ones right now," said John Andrews, the CEO of Evans Data.
The arrival of Windows Vista likely only kept the numbers from being even worse. "I think Vista probably offset some of the decline," Andrews said.
The share for Windows is expected to drop another 2-percent, to about 63 percent, in the next year, Andrews said.
The targeting of Linux by developers increased by 34 percent to 11.8 percent. It had been 8.8 a year ago, according to the survey. Linux targeting is expected to reach 16 percent over the next year.
Evans views the situation as a battle of Windows versus open source with open source maturing, Andrews said. Windows remains tops, though. "They're still dominant, there's no doubt about it," said Andrews. Use of Windows on the development desktop remains steady.
The survey, featuring developers at enterprises and solution providers like system integrators, covered both client and server application development.
Evans Data said the shift away from Windows began about two years ago and is accelerating. Linux is benefiting as are non-traditional client devices. Evans Data also surveyed developer plans for such platforms as Unix and Mac OS but did not release those numbers.
A Microsoft representative said Monday no one was available from the company to comment on the Evans Data report.
Andrews said the verdict still is out on the full impact that open-source software is having on the commercial software market but noted that there will always be a place for both paradigms.
In other findings in the Evans Data Spring North American Development survey, Evans found that JavaScript is the most widely used scripting language. It has more than three times the users of PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor), Ruby, or Python. But Ruby usage is expected to increase by 50 percent within the coming year.
Also gathering steam is virtualisation. A third of developers surveyed are writing applications that support virtualisation with 42.5 percent expected to adopt it within the next year.
Perhaps maybe it’s because Vista ... uh, sucks ? Too big, too intrusive?
Vista's the problem.
According to the article, it was Vista that kept the numbers from being even worse.
The article is wrong on that count. nobody wants a data mining program that pretends to be a buggy operating system.
LOL! I know I don't.
They always seem to gloss over that, but heck, they won’t let facts get in the way of their MS Bashing.
People don’t realize how hard it is to create an operating system, especially one that has to work with every piece of hardware and software.
Apple has it easy since they control the platform, Linux is good, but their hardware support isn’t that great, and their software base is even more shaky from a user stand point.
(And before any of you linux evangelists jump on me, show me a Linux distro that’s easy to install and remove software and hardware from for the average user that doesn’t require compiling software on the fly)
That seems counter-intuitive. In our case, it was Windows Fistula that pushed us over the edge, and changed Linux from being a tolerable alternative to being the preferred solution.
I know--but Vista comes on (virtually) all new PCs now, so developers probably should develop for it since most unskilled people will stick with it--and that's the vast majority of people.
No one has asked me to write an app for it, and I don't know any programmers who've been commissioned to do so.....which is very different from when XP hit the market.
The only computer professional that I know who's running it is one of my employees and he's only kept it on his machine because he's into it for $399.00.
After we labed it for a month we decided we wouldn't upgrade. We're just going to bring Vista machines into the fold as we turn over old computers - and XP becomes unavailable.
What, you don’t like Debian?
Sorry buddy, you’re wrong on all.
How do I know?
I’ve ran all of them, I dual boot with Kubuntu, and with every one of those listed, if you want to use different pieces of hardware, it requires you to compile the driver.
I can say this for video and wifi, I won’t even get into trying to get all my laptop ports working...
You really needs to stop looking at this from a geek’s perspective, and look at it from the average user’s perspective.
If you gave a copy of Linux to a normal user and asked them to install it and use it, they would be screwed since they wouldn’t know how to install or uninstall software, they wouldn’t know where to look for drivers, they wouldn’t know what to do.
So please, until the Linux community stops being so high and mighty, and starts making an OS that is easy to use out of the box, it will never surpass MS, end of story.
Microsoft will simply charge more money to make up the difference.
I'll take your word on it, though.
Anything the RIAA had one part per million for input on, I am not touching because of the associated stench.
That's simply not true. All of the popular, and some not so popular hardware support is built into the kernel these days. However, Windows still has the best hardware support.
Boy--THAT is the truth. I'm going to run my Windows XP systems "until the wheels fall off", and then decide between switching to Linux or the Mac.
I hear people complaining, but I run it and have no issues.
Then again, it’s like that with an Windows Release, no one jumps on out of the gate, it takes about a year for it to settle into things sine most companies don’t want to upgrade right away.
I’m not a Microsoft fanboy, I just think that people unfairly target MS because of their size, Linux software is pretty damn crappy also, yet since their the under dog many of their users overlook it’s flaws blindly because of their hate for MS.
None the less, until some one makes an OS that’s as easy to use and has the software and hardware support of MS and doesn’t cost a fortune (Apple), MS will stay with us.
It’s a free market principle, if people didn’t like it they wouldn’t be using it since they are no forced to.
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