Stan Beer
Monday, 17 November 2008 11:54
Opinion and Analysis
Page 3 of 4
Let's start with the premise that there are about
1.4
billion Internet users (and effectively hence computer users)
worldwide.
Then take the
stats here which show 8.21%
market share for Mac users and 0.71% market share for Linux users. By
those figures, you could say, there are about 115 million Mac OS users
and 10 million Linux users - and say 1.25 billion Windows users.
To be fair, you can also look at
Wikipedia which provides a range of
stats from different sources. Even the most optimistic of estimates
gives Linux at most 2% market share, while some sources go as low as
0.4%.
Lets assume the best case scenario of 2% Linux market share of about 28
million. Microsoft probably sells more Windows licenses than that every
three months.
There's no doubt that the Linux desktop cause has been helped to a
certain degree by the emergence of cheap netbooks like the Asus Eee PC.
However, Asus cottoned on very quickly to the fact that they would sell
a hell of a lot more of their popular new product range if they quickly
brought Windows versions to market - and they were right!
Every six months or so the great white hope of the desktop Linux
tinority, Ubuntu, releases a new version to market. We're up to Ubuntu
8.10 (2008, October). There's no doubt, that the look and feel and
hardware compatibility is improving. However, I still can't run most of
the applications I want on it.
A few days ago, Google released a beta of its new video chat service.
Guess what? It doesn't run on Linux. When I'm away I need to use my
Telstra 3G wireless data card on my netbook. Guess what? It doesn't run
on Linux.
However, the Linux tinority will jump up and down and yell that there's
a multitude of wonderful open source applications sitting right there
in the software repository that will do every single job that I want to
get done. Maybe, but I still can't run MS Office, access an advanced
version of Skype, connect up my 3G data card, run iTunes or get to have
a look at Google Video Chat.
Then of course there is the issue of usability.
CONTINUED Page 4
