M$ recently reported a drop in revenue in the client segment, blaming it on the netbooks, but…
According to Gartner, PC units shipped in 4Q 2008 were 78082000 up 1.1% from the 77195900 shipped in 4Q 2007.
According to M$, their 4Q 2008 client revenue was $3.850 billion, down 9% from 4Q 2007 which had $4.234 billion.
According to Apple, they shipped 2524000 macs in 1Q2009 up 9% from 2319000 in 1Q2008.
So, Apple is shipping 3,23% of all PCs.
Further, netbooks were 5% of all shipments in 4Q2008.
What can we deduce from all these numbers? First, M$’s drop in clients is much larger than what can be attached to netbooks. Even if M$ gave away XP Home for free, netbooks only accounted for 5% of shipments while the segment is down 9% even though units shipped were up 1% or nearly flat, according to IDC. The difference must be a measure of how much people hate Vista and how many units shipped with GNU/Linux.
If adoption of Vista is stopping, we should see a decline in the web stats. It is slowing, apparently. Some OEMs are charging extra to “downgrade” to XP so that should increase client revenue for M$, not decrease it.
That leaves GNU/Linux and about 4% of the 9% decline unaccounted. There were 78 million PCs shipped, 2 million were Macs, 5 million were netbooks and X were GNU/Linux PCs. Some of the 5 million netbooks ran GNU/Linux. I have read shares ranging from 10% to 30%. If we use 20% as the number about 1 million netbooks were GNU/Linux. If X GNU/Linux installations took the place of 4% of installations of that other OS then GNU/Linux must have gone on 4% of the usual number of installations of that other OS.
X = (78 – 2 – 4 )*4/100 = 2.88 million.
So, there were 2.88 million new GNU/Linux PCs in 4Q 2008 and 1 million of those were netbooks. If there are 1000 million PCs operating this is a 0.3% shift per quarter to GNU/Linux. It is slow, but is it sure. I think it is true that GNU/Linux PCs last longer because they do not slow down with use like that other OS, so the installed base of GNU/Linux must be well over 10% now. This is a pessimistic estimate. M$ may not be giving away XP Home for free but charging a small fee, making the GNU/Linux numbers even larger. On a 10% share, a 1% change is a 10% per annum rate of growth, low by FLOSS standards, but this is a minimum estimate. If M$ charges $20 per XP Home on Netbooks, the number is more like 2%/
Expect a continued decline in the fortunes of the monopoly (They do. That’s why they made a layoff.) and continued growth of GNU/Linux.
9461
8751
97
2
0
12808 
5760 
5724 
3889 
1628 
1549 
192 
0 
0 
0 
0 
0 
I like those numbers, thank you for putting them together. I suspect it took a fair amount of research and distillation. There is another statistic I’m waiting for; The drop in infected computers. The only problem is, the malware sector is a growth industry and it has just outgrown the security industry.
I just read about Russia launching a cyberattack against Kyrgyzstan. We are talking about state sponsored, weapons grade attackware. Once that horse has left the barn the war on malware (Microsoft is the biggest arms merchant in this conflict) will become the malware massacre. I don’t expect people to recognize the real culprit even then. People do need to take responsibility for their own computers, but it wouldn’t hurt to give them some help.