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Windows Drops Below 90% Market Share

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 02, @02:09PM
from the easing-the-stranglehold dept.
Windows Operating Systems
ozmanjusri writes "Online market share of the dominant Windows operating system has taken its biggest monthly fall in years to drop below 90%, according to Net Applications Inc. Computerworld reports that Microsoft's flagship product has been steadily losing ground to Mac OS X and Linux, and is at its lowest ebb in the market since 1995. 'Mac OS X... [ended] the month at 8.9%. November was the third month running that Apple's operating system remained above 8%.' The stats show that while some customers are 'upgrading' from XP to Vista, many are jumping ship to Apple, while Linux is also steadily gaining ground. A Net Applications executive suggests the slide may be caused by many of the same factors that caused the fall in Internet Explorer use. 'The more home users who are online, using Macs and Firefox and Safari, the more those shares go up,' he said. November has more weekend days, as well Thanksgiving in the US, a result that emphasizes the importance of corporate sales to Microsoft."
windows os haha yay linux
tech windows
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  • Good news (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kratisto (1080113) on Tuesday December 02, @02:11PM (#25963713)

    This is good news. It surely means the year of the Linux Desktop is impending.

  • Ha! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by elrous0 (869638) * on Tuesday December 02, @02:12PM (#25963725)
    And I get modded flamebait for pointing out [slashdot.org] earlier today that Apple is gaining market share? It's true. Apple is gaining ground. Of course, it probably doesn't help MS that Vista isn't exactly setting the world on fire.

    • Re:Ha! (Score:5, Funny)

      by tripdizzle (1386273) <coalrssotnon@g m a i l.com> on Tuesday December 02, @02:20PM (#25963873)

      Vista isn't exactly setting the world on fire.

      When my aunt wasn't able to install her MS Money on Vista, she thought her world was on fire

    • Re:Ha! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ByOhTek (1181381) on Tuesday December 02, @02:21PM (#25963893) Journal

      No, it's not apples gain in market share people were complaining about, it was the conclusion that desire to write viruses and market share have any significant correlation that they were probably modding you on.

      Remember, not many mods follow the 'there is no -1 disagree for a reason' rule for modding.

      That being said, I think the whole 8.9% market share in conjunction with Apple's "We're number 1" cheerleader commercial quite hilarious.

      • Re:Ha! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by elrous0 (869638) * on Tuesday December 02, @02:27PM (#25963995)

        I think it's less a "good news for Apple" story as it is a "bad news for MS" story. Apple gained a slight bit of market share. But MS is in a much more vulnerable position. MS's entire business model is pretty much PREDICATED on the proposition that they pretty much own the OS market (and has been for a long time now). Anything that threatens that share, even just a little, threatens the very underpinnings of the company.

        God, it was hard getting through that paragraph with no sarcasm.

        • Re:Ha! (Score:5, Funny)

          by truthsearch (249536) on Tuesday December 02, @02:34PM (#25964169) Homepage Journal

          Good thing they're spending $300 million more on marketing, then! Maybe that Mojave thing we keep hearing about will turn things around for them.

          Yeah, I can't avoid the sarcasm either.

        • Re:Ha! (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Golias (176380) on Tuesday December 02, @02:40PM (#25964269)

          I think it's less a "good news for Apple" story as it is a "bad news for MS" story. Apple gained a slight bit of market share. But MS is in a much more vulnerable position. MS's entire business model is pretty much PREDICATED on the proposition that they pretty much own the OS market (and has been for a long time now). Anything that threatens that share, even just a little, threatens the very underpinnings of the company.

          God, it was hard getting through that paragraph with no sarcasm.

          Okay, let's get a little perspective here. It's a common meme in the business that Microsoft makes more money selling software to Mac users than Apple makes selling Macs to Mac users. I'm not positive whether that's still true, but it would not surprise me in the least if it was. MS-Office for Mac still costs a king's ransom and still sells like hotcakes at Apple Stores everywhere.

          Microsoft makes pretty good bank on Windows, but it's far from being their main revenue stream. Productivity software, enterprise solutions, and services are where their big bucks come from.

          What I find amusing about the story is this: Apple raises their market share from what was possibly as low as 3 percent a couple years ago to about 9 percent, while Linux remains something that non-nerds are not even sure how to pronounce, and what's the spin on Slashdot? "OS X and Linux are chipping away at Microsoft's market share!"

          • Re:Ha! (Score:5, Insightful)

            by GuyverDH (232921) on Tuesday December 02, @02:51PM (#25964419)

            OS X is chipping away at the desktop market.
            Linux is chipping away at the enterprise server market.

            So yes, OS X and Linux are chipping away at Microsoft's market share of 2 or more markets...

            • Re:Ha! (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Golias (176380) on Tuesday December 02, @02:58PM (#25964567)

              This is an article about the desktop market, not the enterprise market. Linux remains a non-factor on the desktop.

              As for the enterprise, I admit I haven't been paying very close attention since shifting my career towards more of a programming role, but it seems to me that there were a lot more enterprises running some flavor of Unix or another (including Linux) ten years ago, and a lot fewer Windows Enterprise shops back then. A decade ago, Windows was not taken very seriously as a "big iron" server solution. Now they seem to have bleed into many (if not most) corporate server farms, though still not the overwhelming dominance they have in the desktop market. Am I just horribly misguided on that score?

            • Re:Ha! (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Golias (176380) on Tuesday December 02, @02:51PM (#25964425)

              It's a matter of margins.

              Each Mac mini needs to be built in a Chinese sweatshop and then shipped to the US.

              Each MacBook needs to be built in a Taiwanese sweatshop and then shipped to the US.

              Each version of MS-Office needs to be written once and then sold on $0.50 disks to millions of users for hundreds of dollars each. Plus, if the user is "keeping up" with your versions, you'll ding them about 3 times over the useful life of the Mac they're running it on.

  • Federal bailout? (Score:5, Funny)

    by cashman73 (855518) on Tuesday December 02, @02:13PM (#25963737) Journal
    OMG! Micro$oft is about ready to go under!!!! There's going to be huge consequences for our economy!!!! Send Steve Ballmer to DC in his private jet to throw some chairs around and get us $25 billion immediately!!!!

  • Monopoloy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BradleyUffner (103496) on Tuesday December 02, @02:15PM (#25963763) Homepage

    Just curious, but at what point is Microsoft no longer considered a monopoloy? At what percentage are they legally allowed to start pulling the dirty tricks again?

    • Re:Monopoloy (Score:5, Funny)

      by elrous0 (869638) * on Tuesday December 02, @02:19PM (#25963843)
      Maybe at some point MS will become the underdog and /. will feature Apple stories with a pic of Steve Jobs as a borg. And a million Apple fans will cry out, as if suddenly stripped of their exclusive status symbol as the hip outsiders.

        • Popularity (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Nerdposeur (910128) on Tuesday December 02, @04:04PM (#25965759) Homepage Journal

          That's true with nerds too. Why, just the other day, I was Yahooing a javascript method...

          See what you did there? "Why, that fool doesn't use Google!" The mainstream - and yet still the coolest - search engine. Because it works the best.

          Popularity does not always have a negative feedback loop.

    • Re:Monopoloy (Score:5, Insightful)

      by businessnerd (1009815) on Tuesday December 02, @02:33PM (#25964131)
      Well if Apple continues to gain marketshare, we will soon find out what that threshold is. As soon as Apple gets slapped with an antitrust suit, note the current market share. That shall be hence forth the monopoly threshold. Apple is just as bad as Microsoft when it comes to consumer lock-in. You don't have to look any further than iTunes to see it, but there's plenty more examples. They just never get in trouble for it because they are perceived to be such a small player in the market (even though the iPod is clearly the dominant mp3 player).

    • Re:Monopoloy (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mlwmohawk (801821) on Tuesday December 02, @02:39PM (#25964247)

      Just curious, but at what point is Microsoft no longer considered a monopoloy? At what percentage are they legally allowed to start pulling the dirty tricks again?

      when they no longer conspire to dominate the market through misconduct.

    • Re:Monopoloy (Score:5, Informative)

      by zubikov (1172699) on Tuesday December 02, @02:51PM (#25964417)
      The US antitrust regulators like to go by two metrics: Herfindahl Index (HHI) and Market Concentration Ratio (google them up). HHI = s1^2 + s2^2 + s3^2 + ... + sn^2 (where sn is the market share of the ith firm) If the HHI index is > 1800, this usually means it's a monopoly. Nothing is set in stone, but play around with the numbers and you'll get an idea. Basically Microsoft is still considered a monopoly for a long time.

  • Not quite. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by igotmybfg (525391) <slashdot.danielthompson@net> on Tuesday December 02, @02:34PM (#25964153) Homepage
    The story is about online market share, not market share period - they came up with these results by tracking certain websites to see the proportions of the operating systems of their visitors. As the article explains, they think Windows share dropped because there is a higher concentration of Windows PCs at work than at home, and over Thanksgiving, many people weren't at work. Notably, this study doesn't say anything about the total market share of Windows or any other operating system, as seems to be implied in the headline and most of the summary.

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