OS Market Share: Microsoft Stomps the Competition

wininformant.com ^ | 10-10-03 | Paul Thurrott

[ChinaGotTheGoodsOnClinton]

Despite a rash of gushing news stories about the successes of Linux and Mac OS X on the server and client, respectively, Microsoft's Windows operating systems continue to dominate its OS rivals in both markets, and a recent report notes that usage of Windows is actually growing in both markets as well.

Market researchers at IDC say that various versions of the Windows desktop and server OSes currently dominate their respective markets and will continue to do so for at least the next four years.

IDC credits Microsoft's volume licensing programs for the company's ability to grow share during a time in which it is already the dominant player.

"As Microsoft has brought in [Windows 2000 and XP], there's been a lot of good reasons for customers to go out and buy brand new operating systems," IDC analyst Al Gillen says.

"It's probably unrealistic to expect Microsoft to continue to drive the market as hard as it has been [doing]."

That's because the company has little room for growth on the desktop and is unlikely to duplicate its utter dominance there on the server.

According to the report, titled "Worldwide Client and Server Operating Environment Market Forecast and Analysis, 2002-2007," Windows desktop operating systems sales worldwide increased from 93.2 percent of the market in 2001 to 93.8 percent in 2002, accounting for over $9.75 billion in sales. Various Mac OS versions stalled in second place, with just 2.9 percent of the market (and just 2.2 percent of the revenues), though IDC noted that Apple will relinquish that place to Linux, which is starting to see desktop growth with 2.3 percent of the market in 2002.

All told, 121 million client OSes shipped in 2002, IDC says; about 113 million of those were Windows XP, 3.5 million were Mac OS, and 2.9 million were Linux.

The server side of the equation also sees an interesting breakdown. Microsoft's Windows Server products owned 55.1 percent of the market in 2002, from a unit shipment standpoint, up from 50.5 percent in 2001. Second-place Linux accounted for 23.1 percent of new shipments, up from 22.4 percent in 2001.

Only Windows and Linux saw growth in 2002: Combined, all UNIX versions declined 8.9 percent year-over-year, while Novell Netware fell 12.4 percent.

IDC also noted that the SCO suit against Linux companies is having an effect, ending the notion that Linux is "free" software.

"Even if the litigation is resolved, the incident may forever put to rest the notion that Linux is 'free' software that can be deployed on any machine without any accountability for ownership and licensing," the IDC report reads.

"This weakens a major area of differentiation between Linux and more commercialized operating environments."

However, IDC thinks that the SCO will be resolved, and that Linux usage will grow through 2007. Interestingly, however, Linux usage and sales will still be dwarfed by Windows Server over that time period, the report says.

"Microsoft generates about the same amount of OS revenue in three days as the entire Linux industry generates in one year," IDC notes.

[ChinaGotTheGoodsOnClinton]

Thought you OS guys would like this

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[per loin]

All told, 121 million client OSes shipped in 2002, IDC says; about 113 million of those were Windows XP, 3.5 million were Mac OS, and 2.9 million were Linux.

These numbers only say what they say. I believe most Linux users just download the operating system rather than buy it.

[Wisconsin]

There is a bit of a hole in IDC's stats -- and those of most others. They base their numbers on copies sold.

I know of 8 Linux machines -- mostly servers. One has a "bought" copy of Linux -- all others are legal user made copies.

[NativeNewYorker]

[Leroy S. Mort]

There is a bit of a hole in IDC's stats -- and those of most others. They base their numbers on copies sold.

Which also discounts the gazillions of illegal copies of MS OpSys' in use.

[N3WBI3]

Exactly, I would bet on the windows and Mac numbers being right but you cant count BSD and Linux that way because most people download them.

Case and point my home desktop, it was shipped with windows XP (got a deal from dell) but it had Linux 2.4 put on it just after I opened up the box. This survey counts my desktop as a windows computer thus it is a +1 windows and -1 Linux.

At work we bought redhat 8 for a CVS server but used the same software for a few webservers, a mail server, and a VMware server. This +1 Linux should be a a +7.

Now that being said we have many more windows server than Linux servers (bad design over the past four years) but in the past year we are -10 windows, +7 Linux, and +2 Solaris.

The desktop is an even poorer measure as we have recently started to buy AS from RedHat for the servers but there is no real need for support on the desktop.

[Cicero]

I understand that Bill Gates isn't as pure as the driven snow, but I've always liked Microsoft. Windows XP is terrific.

[eno_]

There is a bit of a hole in IDC's stats -- and those of most others. They base their numbers on copies sold.

Holy crap! And people pay money for market stats like that?

[SengirV]

I understand that Bill Gates isn't as pure as the driven snow, but I've always liked Microsoft. Windows XP is terrific.

If you like Windows XP, you should really look at the inspiration for it - Mac OS X. Of course Mac OS X doesn't have any of that ugly windows stuff in it like registries, or dll's and other such nonsense.

[N3WBI3]

Very good point, on the desktop market windows probably has hundreds of thousands of illegal copies out there. I suspect there are are fewer than there are of Linux destkops that were not purchaced.

On the server side its totally different as a % I would wager that the number of illegal copies is much smaller because companies tend to be careful about stuff like that.

[N3WBI3]

What are you talking about NT was written by many of the guys who wrote VMS which predated the BSD Unix on which mac is based. Now 2000 was NT5 and XP is NT5.1 mac OSX has nothing to do with XP. Now the early Mac's inspired Gates with windows 3.1 (and refined with 95) but that was basically in terms of the UI not the underlying system.

MacOSX is nice, and IMHO far better than XP however in your own words "Of course Mac OS X doesn't have any of that ugly windows stuff in it like registries, or dll's and other such nonsense." The underlying systems are totally different. Dont be an OS fanboy know what youre talking about..

[N3WBI3]

I thought they were going the right way with 2K, it was actually a substantial improvement over NT4. More secure and stable, they did not flash it up and call it a new version. alas tehy went right back to old tricks with XP (which is a piece of crap). with XP they basically took a solid system (2k) and dressed it up and in the process borke it.

[RLK]

I use Windows because all the major engineering programs are specifically made to operate in Windows and have been tested in Windows. Geven a Windows 92% share in operating systems, it does not pay companies to concern themselves about writing programs and testing them for other operating systems.

[SengirV]

I'm not talking about the underlying code. I'm talking about look and feel. XP is infinately easier and looks very different than NT/ME. Many of those changes were lifted from OS X. As a fanboy yourself you should be aware of HOW much XP owes to OS X.

[cynwoody]

Web server market share (from Netcraft):

[Coral Snake]

China also got the goods on GATES. In fact pretty much the entire store. (Win XP internals and source code.) The owner of the most popular OS is just another Billy TRAITOR like Clinton.

Guns, Linux and Liberty. ;c)

[N3WBI3]

lol, yea I dont own XP or OSX and Im the fanboy? I set up OSX for my mother, and XP for my sister and I can tell you that as a third party to both operating systems they look and act nothing alike. NT acts just like XP (XP release date early 2001), and Mac gave up its claim to strict innovation when the used BSD as the basis for their new OS (MacOSX Public release date was march 2001).

Are you trying to tell me that after the OSX beta was released in September 2000 that MS started redirected a project it had been working on for several years in such a short time? XP ows a whole lot less to OSX than OSX owes to BSD! (BTW Im not a BSD user either so there is no fanboy component there). Mac Bought up NEXT Put it onto a BSD subsystem and called it OSX and fanboys like you complain that MS does not innovate?

For the record I use Linux, I dont have a horse in this race but if I had to choose between OSX and XP I would take OSX hands down (if I ignored the cost of hardware).

[Coral Snake]

Not exactly true. I would imagine that since OS/X uses a BSD
*nix core that it does use .so libraries as other *nix/Linux dirivitives do, .so is the *nix equivalant of .dll.

[Jumper]

The bottom line is financial. Investors make money on Microsoft and cannot make money on products which are free. Only those who are in distribution make money on Lunix and the free stuff. If you want to simply use a product, MS still has a wider distribution and less learning curve. I rarely see anything except MS products in private hands - ease of use and familarity drives the domination of MS at home, and the NASDAQ drives the investors.