"Top Server Market Findings
Linux server demand was positively impacted by high performance computing (HPC) and cloud infrastructure deployments, as hardware revenue improved 12.7% year over year in 4Q12 to $3.0 billion. Linux servers now represent 20.4% of all server revenue, up 1.7 points when compared with the fourth quarter of 2011.
Microsoft Windows server demand continued to increase in 4Q12 as hardware revenue increased 3.2% year over year. Quarterly revenue of $6.7 billion for Windows servers represented 45.8% of overall quarterly factory revenue, the same share as in the prior year's quarter.
Unix servers experienced a revenue decline of 24.1% year over year to $2.6 billion representing 17.6% of quarterly server revenue. This was the sixth consecutive quarter of revenue decline in the Unix server market and all major Unix server vendors experienced a revenue decline when compared with the fourth quarter of 2011.
After five consecutive quarters of revenue declines, IBM's System z mainframe running z/OS increased revenue 55.6% year over year to $1.8 billion, representing 12.3% of all server revenue in 4Q12."
The contention is that Linux is killed Windows on the server side. No, not so much.
Comparing "revenue increases" is not a useful measure, when you're talking about a product that's available for free.
You'd have to compare number installations, not revenue, particularly when e.g. people might be switching from RHEL to CentOS, or people just get more comfortable using free distros after they start realizing how rarely they need that "professional support" that they thought they needed.
No I haven't, but I'm not sure what CentOS has to do with my question. CentOS is basically a rebuild of RHEL with Red Hat trademarks stripped out. I'm aware that they've had some trouble keeping up with the RHEL releases, particularly when RHEL 6 was released, but that's because they are understaffed. I just don't see how they would be affected by changes downstream of CentOS.
Because a company doesn't make money based on its stock price, but based on its profits.
Long term investors could care less about the price of Apple stock, they care about sustainable profits and sustainable dividend payments as well as no debt, plenty of reserves.
Speculators on the other hand, don't care about how healthy a company is, they just care about the stock price moving such as to generate a trading profit. As such the volatility of the stockprice, which is a nightmare for non-seasoned long-term investors, is what drives their profits. A stock that stays high is boring to a trader, and while traders could make a lot of money in a quick run-up to 700, they couldn't make much money if Apple had stayed there, and slowly had crept up to 725 or 750 with mostly sideways movement.
Shorting the stock or holding put options, and then talking the price down, that however generates massive profits, just as gaining again on the way up once people realize that all the analysts were producing was unfounded rumors and hot air.
The stock market, except for very long-term moving averages, is a horrible indicator of the success of a company in real terms.
Temporary thread topic divergence:
Stock valuation is volatile because every investor weights factors differently, but there is one overarching theme: a stock's price reflects investors' expectations of all future performance. When Apple stock crashed, it wasn't based on current annual profits. Instead it was based on an enormous downgrade in expected future performance.
You cannot blame the crash on speculators intentionally driving it down with shorts. They would be just as happy with the price continuing to fly upward as it had been. In fact, the real scenario was the reverse. Investor expectations widely fell, and a selloff began, prompting some investors to gamble on a short. Speculators could short the stock all they wanted without greatly affecting the price because their trading volume is so low. When a stock falls by close to half its price it's because the market was flooded with sellers to the point that they were willing to sell to anyone willing to buy and at any price. The current price reflects the equilibrium at which the volume of buyers equals the volume of sellers, and in Apple's case, the volume of sellers was considerably greater than the buyers.
Finally, a stock's price at any moment indicates nothing about the performance of a company, but the trend in that price does. Apple was rising at a rate above almost all other stocks because they released innovative products that were changing market segments. When the price collapsed, it reflected broad views that Apple's future performance would likely fall below Jobs-era expectations. Now the price is seemingly stable, reflecting that investors think its current share price is appropriate given their expectations of performance.
Well, don't bet on Apple never getting back into the server farm space. When Apple abandoned Xserve, Xserve wasn't doing too shabby. They were selling decently, and prices were also not much higher that alternatives. Even if the volumes were not that great, I don't think there was much sense in Apple completely terminating Xserve, at a time when Apple was becoming more relevant in the enterprise, because of iOS.
There is more to this story than the general public knows about, and the last chapter in this story has not been written yet.
I believe, Apple is going to announce a new Xserve platform in the next 18 months, that will blow away existing servers. The new Xserve will be based off massively parallel ARM multitasking, and will be based on Hybrid drives for super fast data access. They will run 64 bit versions of a specially optimized version of MacOS with all the user interface elements removed - probably called xOS. These will be quad core 2.0 GHz and higher processors, with 16GB RAM, all on an integrated SoC, The main advantage of this architecture would be extremely low power consumption.
Over 90% of the heavy servers today are ultimately split up into smaller virtual servers. These heavy servers consume large amounts of power, and are mostly under-utilized despite virtualization. ARM quad core 2GHz processors running 64 bit software can easily perform the tasks that most of these virtual servers can perform, at significantly lower up front cost, and power usage. Quite obviously, ARM is already capable of running web servers, mail servers, and small app servers. The next generation of ARM will easily handle the power needs of mid level servers, databases, etc. Eventually, only seriously heavy tasks, that cannot be easily parallelized would need heavy machines.
Wishful thinking, I would like to see them return too but I highly doubt it.
It might be fun to watch Richard Stallman read this article aloud and hear his comments. He's got some good ideas and great principles with the exception of sharing. Sharing can become piracy and is wrong when it takes away money from the author or developer of something that isn't freely given away by them. I think he's nuts on that point.
Both free software and proprietary software need to exist. They can and do exist together. They both are advancing the world of computing and technology.
If Android is serving its purpose of getting advertising dollars for Google then it is doing its job even though it is free. It is not failing. It is a tool for generating revenue. Not all tools last forever as technology and the world evolve. Google will need to make new tools to generate revenue. It is doing so with the Nexus 7, the Google Play Store, Chromebooks, Google's online services (gmail, Google Docs), and Motorola. Will it be successful in all areas? No. Apple and Microsoft fail at things too.
How do Novell and Canonical earn money with SUSE and Ubuntu? I'm now using Open SUSE 12.3 and I've used Ubuntu too. I do believe that both are innovative and lead Apple in different ways. It might take a bit of work to get these OSs working well but when they do they rock. I like both better than OS X.
Comparing "revenue increases" is not a useful measure, when you're talking about a product that's available for free.
You'd have to compare number installations, not revenue, particularly when e.g. people might be switching from RHEL to CentOS, or people just get more comfortable using free distros after they start realizing how rarely they need that "professional support" that they thought they needed.
Not revenue increases, revenue share.
"Linux servers now represent 20.4% of all server revenue ..."
"... Windows servers represented 45.8% of overall quarterly factory revenue"
"Unix servers ... representing 17.6% of quarterly server revenue."
"IBM's System z mainframe running z/OS ... representing 12.3% of all server revenue in 4Q12."
Jeez.
And no, I don't have to compare installations and not revenue until you or someone produces some installed base metrics.
ITunes was NOT originally for organising ripped music onto iPods.
How soon YOU forget!
yes it was, i can remember being Intrigued by the AAC codec and was looking for free encoders... before that mp3 players, real player, win amp, liquid audio player... i settled on iTunes, not because of an iPod with because in was easy to organize the music. (i hated real player, had to pay for it (i did still dont use it)
) winamp had the folder Arrangement thing(i dislike), yet great for transfering files off ofthe old iPods.
when i was looking at the mpeg2', mpeg4,encoder i was using quicktime on windows... slow and i could not automate the encoding so i learned Avisyth, meigui...
(hindsight being 20/20, and with the computer upgrade fever i had(lol), should have bought a mac, but mac was expensive and i didn't need to get any work done, so it was the free meigui thing (the deinteracers of avisyth sold me on it)
TL;DR iTunes was great for ripping from CD's to your iPod!... and it did not add DRM to the music, or transfer limits like WINDOWS wma!, or that awful liquid audio AAC encoder.
I didn't say iTunes couldn't do all of that. I wrote that iTunes was not *originally* developed for doing all that, which was the claim I was refuting.
Comparing "revenue increases" is not a useful measure, when you're talking about a product that's available for free.
You'd have to compare number installations, not revenue, particularly when e.g. people might be switching from RHEL to CentOS, or people just get more comfortable using free distros after they start realizing how rarely they need that "professional support" that they thought they needed.
Not revenue increases, revenue share.
"Linux servers now represent 20.4% of all server revenue ..."
"... Windows servers represented 45.8% of overall quarterly factory revenue"
"Unix servers ... representing 17.6% of quarterly server revenue."
"IBM's System z mainframe running z/OS ... representing 12.3% of all server revenue in 4Q12."
Jeez.
And no, I don't have to compare installations and not revenue until you or someone produces some installed base metrics.
I don't have to do anything, because I don't make a claim. However revenue based metrics are meaningless when trying to look at the penetration of what's essentially a free product. Also revenue based metrics say nothing about market dominance, because if one vendor sells a server for $2.5/k for 5 users, and then asks for $500/additional 5 users, while another vendor asks $250 for unlimited users, and their competition makes available the same product minus branding for $0, then the only thing this tells you is who has more revenue share. Since this doesn't even account for profit margins and the vendor's costs, it doesn't even say who wins in terms of profitability, and much less does any of it say anything about market share.
Even if all market entrants were for pay systems, it would say little, unless the product prices remain constant from period to period. But if one raises prices and the other lowers prices, it could well be that one raises revenue share even as their market share declines, and vice versa.
Bottom line: the metric you quoted has little to no value to support the claims you were trying to support with them.
I think the root cause of the iOS vs Android all originates from the fact that Android wouldn't have been born, if not for iOS.
Interesting theory that would require a time machine, given that Android was born and acquired by Google before iOS was announced.
Hard to say, because Android pretending to be open, and being the subject of a take-over was in the public eye long before there was a viable product.
On the other hand, iOS wasn't even called iOS until quite some time after iPhone and iPod touch were available.
Also, Android pre-iOS was a very different beast, more like a feature phone OS. It was quickly adapted to look and work much like the iPhone, once the iPhone's success became clear.
So from that point of view, it's legitimate to say, that Android pre-iOS was actually a different product that shared some underlying technologies with what's known as Android now. The pre-iOS Android is about as similar to what's Android now, as OS X is to iOS. Same underpinnings, very different Gestalt.
What a strange read. I guess it's all true if the only thing you care about is money. So if you're Wikipedia, for example, or any of the important changes that have come about thanks to the Internet, it's quite weird. And it's a big surprise to many people that the iTunes store is overshadowing the mobile web. Big surprise as in completely different than their experience.
Methinks some people need to get out of their bubbles. Putting together pieces of history does not make for a true story.
Because a company doesn't make money based on its stock price, but based on its profits.
Long term investors could care less about the price of Apple stock, they care about sustainable profits and sustainable dividend payments as well as no debt, plenty of reserves.
Speculators on the other hand, don't care about how healthy a company is, they just care about the stock price moving such as to generate a trading profit. As such the volatility of the stockprice, which is a nightmare for non-seasoned long-term investors, is what drives their profits. A stock that stays high is boring to a trader, and while traders could make a lot of money in a quick run-up to 700, they couldn't make much money if Apple had stayed there, and slowly had crept up to 725 or 750 with mostly sideways movement.
Shorting the stock or holding put options, and then talking the price down, that however generates massive profits, just as gaining again on the way up once people realize that all the analysts were producing was unfounded rumors and hot air.
The stock market, except for very long-term moving averages, is a horrible indicator of the success of a company in real terms.
Temporary thread topic divergence:
Stock valuation is volatile because every investor weights factors differently, but there is one overarching theme: a stock's price reflects investors' expectations of all future performance. When Apple stock crashed, it wasn't based on current annual profits. Instead it was based on an enormous downgrade in expected future performance.
You cannot blame the crash on speculators intentionally driving it down with shorts. They would be just as happy with the price continuing to fly upward as it had been. In fact, the real scenario was the reverse. Investor expectations widely fell, and a selloff began, prompting some investors to gamble on a short. Speculators could short the stock all they wanted without greatly affecting the price because their trading volume is so low. When a stock falls by close to half its price it's because the market was flooded with sellers to the point that they were willing to sell to anyone willing to buy and at any price. The current price reflects the equilibrium at which the volume of buyers equals the volume of sellers, and in Apple's case, the volume of sellers was considerably greater than the buyers.
Finally, a stock's price at any moment indicates nothing about the performance of a company, but the trend in that price does. Apple was rising at a rate above almost all other stocks because they released innovative products that were changing market segments. When the price collapsed, it reflected broad views that Apple's future performance would likely fall below Jobs-era expectations. Now the price is seemingly stable, reflecting that investors think its current share price is appropriate given their expectations of performance.
I'm quite familiar with what drives regular volatility. It's however not regular volatility when a stock tumbles from over 700 to a little bit more than half its price "because of growth concerns" when the stock would be valued fairly even at 0% growth given the fundamentals. Apple wasn't a stock that was overhyped on overly optimistic growth expectations, it was always quite conservatively valued even near its peak.
To anyone doing technical trading, it was however clear that after such a steep run up to 700, the stock would make a pause, and a stock making a pause is useless for trading. So generating a lot of negative analyst coverage is bound to kick the stock down somewhat, so there's a profitable trade. And that the stock created a surprisingly large downward momentum is likely due to the fact that a lot of non-savvy investors bought into Apple, maybe even leveraged or otherwise overextended with their investments, who got margin squeezed or did panic sales, which created a positive feedback cycle.
None of that comes at a surprise for professional investors, who have access to statistics on holdings, margin borrowing, etc.
Just like during the tech bubble analysts talked stocks up way past any reasonable price for the purpose of generating trading profits, so analysts can drive profits by talking a stock down. Analysts role in the stock market is just as questionable as that of the ratings agencies in the mortgage backed securities market that brought the financial crisis upon us. They create a false sense of security and stampedes in either direction depending on which side they come down, and they are not the disinterested parties they pretend to be, because they need to get paid; they are not tenured college professors who occasionally give some friendly advice, they write their reports for profit, and are not paid by the line like a freelance reporter in the local newspaper...
Saying Samsung is not successful because of Android is like saying that Apple is not successful because of Intel.
It is precisely because of Android's open source nature that Samsung's software additions and modifications actually exist. Think about it; you don't see many of the same features on Samsung's Windows mobile and Windows 8 devices, and Samsung does not market those devices nearly as much around features. That Samsung isn't marketing its smartphones around its add-on features rather than Android does not necessarily have anything to do with that.
In the same way, Apple's use of Intel to augment its technology has created application compatibility and enabled better performance that are part of what give Apple reasonable success today, because the Intel technology inside Apple's products is an integral part of providing the experience that Apple buyers want.
With that, your opinion on how open doesn't always win is invalid.
When you look at what open source can create and do, even if the end result from a venture into working with what is (or was at one point) open source is proprietary, open always wins.
And honestly, droidftw's comment. Success doesn't revolve around making the most money, and the amount of global Android market-share is more than disproving that outdated theory.
I don't have to do anything, because I don't make a claim. However revenue based metrics are meaningless when trying to look at the penetration of what's essentially a free product. Also revenue based metrics say nothing about market dominance, because if one vendor sells a server for $2.5/k for 5 users, and then asks for $500/additional 5 users, while another vendor asks $250 for unlimited users, and their competition makes available the same product minus branding for $0, then the only thing this tells you is who has more revenue share. Since this doesn't even account for profit margins and the vendor's costs, it doesn't even say who wins in terms of profitability, and much less does any of it say anything about market share.
Even if all market entrants were for pay systems, it would say little, unless the product prices remain constant from period to period. But if one raises prices and the other lowers prices, it could well be that one raises revenue share even as their market share declines, and vice versa.
Bottom line: the metric you quoted has little to no value to support the claims you were trying to support with them.
Wrong. The original assertion was that Linux killed Windows in the server space which if true MS would have a small share of the revenue, not the largest share of server revenue. I assert that Linux did nothing of the sort and windows server revenue shows that MS retains huge market share for business servers. There is zero metrics that show that Linux killed windows on servers.
And yes, you do have to provide installed base numbers if you wish to say that revenue doesn't matter and installed base does. THAT was your "claim". For all you know windows server installed base is larger than linux anyway and you can't show otherwise.
I don't have to do anything, because I don't make a claim. However revenue based metrics are meaningless when trying to look at the penetration of what's essentially a free product. Also revenue based metrics say nothing about market dominance, because if one vendor sells a server for $2.5/k for 5 users, and then asks for $500/additional 5 users, while another vendor asks $250 for unlimited users, and their competition makes available the same product minus branding for $0, then the only thing this tells you is who has more revenue share. Since this doesn't even account for profit margins and the vendor's costs, it doesn't even say who wins in terms of profitability, and much less does any of it say anything about market share.
Even if all market entrants were for pay systems, it would say little, unless the product prices remain constant from period to period. But if one raises prices and the other lowers prices, it could well be that one raises revenue share even as their market share declines, and vice versa.
Bottom line: the metric you quoted has little to no value to support the claims you were trying to support with them.
Wrong. The original assertion was that Linux killed Windows in the server space which if true MS would have a small share of the revenue, not the largest share of server revenue. I assert that Linux did nothing of the sort and windows server revenue shows that MS retains huge market share for business servers. There is zero metrics that show that Linux killed windows on servers.
And yes, you do have to provide installed base numbers if you wish to say that revenue doesn't matter and installed base does. THAT was your "claim". For all you know windows server installed base is larger than linux anyway and you can't show otherwise.
I made no claims regarding the relative market share or usage penetration of either system. I only pointed out that the data you provided is useless in supporting any claims regarding that particular debate.
To show this in an extreme example: if there are one billion Linux server using a free distribution, and only a single, paid Windows Server installation, Windows Server will have 100% revenue share, even though it has only a one-billionth of the installed base.
While in reality, the figures won't be that slanted, it clearly shows that the kind of statistic cited does not provide conclusive evidence in regards to the matter discussed.
Since I made no claims on either side of this argument, I don't have to do anything but show the plainly obvious that the numbers quoted are meaningless in the context of the particular debate.
Saying Samsung is not successful because of Android is like saying that Apple is not successful because of Intel.
It is precisely because of Android's open source nature that Samsung's software additions and modifications actually exist. Think about it; you don't see many of the same features on Samsung's Windows mobile and Windows 8 devices, and Samsung does not market those devices nearly as much around features. That Samsung isn't marketing its smartphones around its add-on features rather than Android does not necessarily have anything to do with that.
In the same way, Apple's use of Intel to augment its technology has created application compatibility and enabled better performance that are part of what give Apple reasonable success today, because the Intel technology inside Apple's products is an integral part of providing the experience that Apple buyers want.
With that, your opinion on how open doesn't always win is invalid.
When you look at what open source can create and do, even if the end result from a venture into working with what is (or was at one point) open source is proprietary, open always wins.
And honestly, droidftw's comment. Success doesn't revolve around making the most money, and the amount of global Android market-share is more than disproving that outdated theory.
Android by itself didn't make Sammy successful. Sammy added proprietary features to its phones while also copying a successful closed OS. If it were just Android, why is no one making any money selling it.
And market share doesn't make a success. If it did, Sammy would be giving away its phones. That's even more outdated.
I made no claims regarding the relative market share or usage penetration of either system. I only pointed out that the data you provided is useless in supporting any claims regarding that particular debate.
You made a claim. These are your exact words:
Quote:
You'd have to compare number installations, not revenue,
Why do I need to compare number installations vs revenue to disprove that Linux killed Windows in the server space? The data provided completely disproves the death of Windows in the server space unless you consider the largest share of revenue to be dead.
Quote:
To show this in an extreme example: if there are one billion Linux server using a free distribution, and only a single, paid Windows Server installation, Windows Server will have 100% revenue share, even though it has only a one-billionth of the installed base.
While in reality, the figures won't be that slanted, it clearly shows that the kind of statistic cited does not provide conclusive evidence in regards to the matter discussed.
Since I made no claims on either side of this argument, I don't have to do anything but show the plainly obvious that the numbers quoted are meaningless in the context of the particular debate.
The fact is that you couldn't read a simple paragraph and determine that revenue share was the relevant fact and not "revenue increases". Given that you seem to have no clue as to what the hell the "debate" is about your opinion means little. To refresh the original assertion by rgwebb1469 was:
Quote:
"The stagnation of Microsoft was a two front battle with Mac and iOS devices on the consumer side and LAMP stack on the enterprise IT side."
Even in the LAMP stronghold MS/IIS retain 30% share and ASP .NET remains a major server stack technology. There was no two front battle any more than iOS and Android was engaged in a head to head battle in the US market until recently. Both Apple and Android was destroying Nokia and RIM share. Likewise both Windows Server and Linux was destroying Solaris, HPUX, AIX and IRIX share. When the market stabilized you have pretty much what we have today. Old school IBM and old school unix on big iron, linux for web servers and HPC and windows everywhere else. The US smartphone market has stabilized and you see the same iOS creep upwards against Android that you see OSX vs Windows. Small but upward.
Frankly, the school is still out whether Windows is dead at all. It will certainly maintain majority share on workstations and professional desktop and laptops. OSX is not about to dethrone it. As far as tablets go it's still a race for 2nd place. I think Wintel has legs for the business tablet market. Haswell will make for a good hybrid ultrabook/tablet combo and if Win8 looks like Vista remember that Win7 followed relatively quickly after Vista.
Microsoft has not stagnated as much as stumble badly on new execution. Who, other than Apple, is actually well positioned to take advantage of that stumble? Virus infected Android? No. Linux? The only contender is Ubuntu and that's as much a forlorn hope as on the desktop. Chrome? Not likely.
Even iOS isn't THAT well positioned to take massive share of the business tablet market.
[quote name="nht" url="/t/158383/editorial-apple-google-and-the-failure-of-androids-open/200#post_2359193"][QUOTE name="rcfa" url="/t/158383/editorial-apple-google-and-the-failure-of-androids-open/200#post_2359178"] I made no claims regarding the relative market share or usage penetration of either system. I only pointed out that the data you provided is useless in supporting any claims regarding that particular debate.
[/QUOTE]
You made a claim. These are your exact words: [QUOTE] You'd have to compare number installations, not revenue,
[/QUOTE] [/QUOTE]
This is a statement about methodology, not about whether or not Linux did or didn't kill Windows.
[quote name="nht" url="/t/158383/editorial-apple-google-and-the-failure-of-androids-open/200#post_2359193"] Why do I need to compare number installations vs revenue to disprove that Linux killed Windows in the server space? The data provided completely disproves the death of Windows in the server space unless you consider the largest share of revenue to be dead. [/QUOTE]
I don't consider anything, because I didn't make any claims regarding whether or not Linux did or didn't kill Windows. However, largest revenue share means nothing when the opponent of matter is a free product, as I amply illustrated by taking it ad absurdum with only a single-for-pay server installation in the world left, while billions of free Linux servers are running the rest of the compute universe: in that case Windows enjoys a 100% revenue share, but it's still very dead.
Besides, for Linux to kill Windows it doesn't have to be dead, just beaten: when the Yankees kill the Red Sox, there are no bodies in the ball park, and the Red Sox franchise is far from bankrupt afterwards. But the Yankees still kill the Red Sox, as is evident when comparing the number of won Championships.
Further, as you point out yourself, the original claim (not made by me) is:
[QUOTE] "The stagnation of Microsoft was a two front battle with Mac and iOS devices on the consumer side and LAMP stack on the enterprise IT side." [/QUOTE]
and STAGNATION is about lack of growth, massively slowed growth, shrinkage of market share/installed base. All of these can be true all the while Windows still is able to hold the largest revenue share when the opposing product is free. I make no assertions as to whether that is the case or not, but that your measure of relative success is inadequate to make any point in this discussion.
Not sure about which part of "free is not measurable in revenue" is so hard to understand?
Not sure about which part of "free is not measurable in revenue" is so hard to understand?
Because free doesn't exist. There is always cost or there simply isn't investment. Linux exists in the enterprise primarily because of IBM and to a lesser degree HP. Linux market penetration can be see in the form of linux server sales and linux support contracts for IBM, HP, Dell and Oracle.
Businesses pay for Linux and linux servers. Even in the case of "free" Linux there is significant TCO numbers that are measurable.
Not sure about which part of "free is not measurable in revenue" is so hard to understand?
Because free doesn't exist. There is always cost or there simply isn't investment. Linux exists in the enterprise primarily because of IBM and to a lesser degree HP. Linux market penetration can be see in the form of linux server sales and linux support contracts for IBM, HP, Dell and Oracle.
Businesses pay for Linux and linux servers. Even in the case of "free" Linux there is significant TCO numbers that are measurable.
The TCO numbers were measureable if they were reasonably standardized and published, but that's not in the numbers you quoted. And even if measured, they don't say much about the relative market penetration, since e.g. an internet start up may have a regular employee who does server management on the side, while a similar sized other company pays for the same server management a massive maintenance contract fee. Further, similar contracts for different products have vastly different fees, both based on perceived reputation, market power, etc. of the vendor, and on how troublesome a product is, essentially precluding any meaningful conclusions about installed base of products based on these numbers.
If someone buys a Dell server, and installs Linux on it, it counts as Dell hardware sales, not as "Linux revenue". If the same hires a Linux sysadmin it won't be reflected in Linux revenue share, either, even though both of these are part of the TCO equation.
So all you try to do here is win some points with the "nothing is free" red herring while distracting from the fact that a free product (in terms of sale price) will not register in revenue statistics.
I'd love to see some people here in any sort of even semi-rigorous philosophy class, given the illogical reasoning displayed. Sort of reminds me of the infamous Monty Python scene about the witch and wood...
Comments
Comparing "revenue increases" is not a useful measure, when you're talking about a product that's available for free.
You'd have to compare number installations, not revenue, particularly when e.g. people might be switching from RHEL to CentOS, or people just get more comfortable using free distros after they start realizing how rarely they need that "professional support" that they thought they needed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Relic
Have you used CentOS?
No I haven't, but I'm not sure what CentOS has to do with my question. CentOS is basically a rebuild of RHEL with Red Hat trademarks stripped out. I'm aware that they've had some trouble keeping up with the RHEL releases, particularly when RHEL 6 was released, but that's because they are understaffed. I just don't see how they would be affected by changes downstream of CentOS.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
Because a company doesn't make money based on its stock price, but based on its profits.
Long term investors could care less about the price of Apple stock, they care about sustainable profits and sustainable dividend payments as well as no debt, plenty of reserves.
Speculators on the other hand, don't care about how healthy a company is, they just care about the stock price moving such as to generate a trading profit. As such the volatility of the stockprice, which is a nightmare for non-seasoned long-term investors, is what drives their profits. A stock that stays high is boring to a trader, and while traders could make a lot of money in a quick run-up to 700, they couldn't make much money if Apple had stayed there, and slowly had crept up to 725 or 750 with mostly sideways movement.
Shorting the stock or holding put options, and then talking the price down, that however generates massive profits, just as gaining again on the way up once people realize that all the analysts were producing was unfounded rumors and hot air.
The stock market, except for very long-term moving averages, is a horrible indicator of the success of a company in real terms.
Temporary thread topic divergence:
Stock valuation is volatile because every investor weights factors differently, but there is one overarching theme: a stock's price reflects investors' expectations of all future performance. When Apple stock crashed, it wasn't based on current annual profits. Instead it was based on an enormous downgrade in expected future performance.
You cannot blame the crash on speculators intentionally driving it down with shorts. They would be just as happy with the price continuing to fly upward as it had been. In fact, the real scenario was the reverse. Investor expectations widely fell, and a selloff began, prompting some investors to gamble on a short. Speculators could short the stock all they wanted without greatly affecting the price because their trading volume is so low. When a stock falls by close to half its price it's because the market was flooded with sellers to the point that they were willing to sell to anyone willing to buy and at any price. The current price reflects the equilibrium at which the volume of buyers equals the volume of sellers, and in Apple's case, the volume of sellers was considerably greater than the buyers.
Finally, a stock's price at any moment indicates nothing about the performance of a company, but the trend in that price does. Apple was rising at a rate above almost all other stocks because they released innovative products that were changing market segments. When the price collapsed, it reflected broad views that Apple's future performance would likely fall below Jobs-era expectations. Now the price is seemingly stable, reflecting that investors think its current share price is appropriate given their expectations of performance.
Wishful thinking, I would like to see them return too but I highly doubt it.
It might be fun to watch Richard Stallman read this article aloud and hear his comments. He's got some good ideas and great principles with the exception of sharing. Sharing can become piracy and is wrong when it takes away money from the author or developer of something that isn't freely given away by them. I think he's nuts on that point.
Both free software and proprietary software need to exist. They can and do exist together. They both are advancing the world of computing and technology.
If Android is serving its purpose of getting advertising dollars for Google then it is doing its job even though it is free. It is not failing. It is a tool for generating revenue. Not all tools last forever as technology and the world evolve. Google will need to make new tools to generate revenue. It is doing so with the Nexus 7, the Google Play Store, Chromebooks, Google's online services (gmail, Google Docs), and Motorola. Will it be successful in all areas? No. Apple and Microsoft fail at things too.
How do Novell and Canonical earn money with SUSE and Ubuntu? I'm now using Open SUSE 12.3 and I've used Ubuntu too. I do believe that both are innovative and lead Apple in different ways. It might take a bit of work to get these OSs working well but when they do they rock. I like both better than OS X.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
Comparing "revenue increases" is not a useful measure, when you're talking about a product that's available for free.
You'd have to compare number installations, not revenue, particularly when e.g. people might be switching from RHEL to CentOS, or people just get more comfortable using free distros after they start realizing how rarely they need that "professional support" that they thought they needed.
Not revenue increases, revenue share.
"Linux servers now represent 20.4% of all server revenue ..."
"... Windows servers represented 45.8% of overall quarterly factory revenue"
"Unix servers ... representing 17.6% of quarterly server revenue."
"IBM's System z mainframe running z/OS ... representing 12.3% of all server revenue in 4Q12."
Jeez.
And no, I don't have to compare installations and not revenue until you or someone produces some installed base metrics.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nikilok
I think the root cause of the iOS vs Android all originates from the fact that Android wouldn't have been born, if not for iOS.
Interesting theory that would require a time machine, given that Android was born and acquired by Google before iOS was announced.
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Originally Posted by haar
Quote:
Originally Posted by stelligent
ITunes was NOT originally for organising ripped music onto iPods.
How soon YOU forget!
yes it was, i can remember being Intrigued by the AAC codec and was looking for free encoders... before that mp3 players, real player, win amp, liquid audio player... i settled on iTunes, not because of an iPod with because in was easy to organize the music. (i hated real player, had to pay for it (i did still dont use it)
) winamp had the folder Arrangement thing(i dislike), yet great for transfering files off ofthe old iPods.
when i was looking at the mpeg2', mpeg4,encoder i was using quicktime on windows... slow and i could not automate the encoding so i learned Avisyth, meigui...
(hindsight being 20/20, and with the computer upgrade fever i had(lol), should have bought a mac, but mac was expensive and i didn't need to get any work done, so it was the free meigui thing (the deinteracers of avisyth sold me on it)
TL;DR iTunes was great for ripping from CD's to your iPod!... and it did not add DRM to the music, or transfer limits like WINDOWS wma!, or that awful liquid audio AAC encoder.
I didn't say iTunes couldn't do all of that. I wrote that iTunes was not *originally* developed for doing all that, which was the claim I was refuting.
I don't have to do anything, because I don't make a claim. However revenue based metrics are meaningless when trying to look at the penetration of what's essentially a free product. Also revenue based metrics say nothing about market dominance, because if one vendor sells a server for $2.5/k for 5 users, and then asks for $500/additional 5 users, while another vendor asks $250 for unlimited users, and their competition makes available the same product minus branding for $0, then the only thing this tells you is who has more revenue share. Since this doesn't even account for profit margins and the vendor's costs, it doesn't even say who wins in terms of profitability, and much less does any of it say anything about market share.
Even if all market entrants were for pay systems, it would say little, unless the product prices remain constant from period to period. But if one raises prices and the other lowers prices, it could well be that one raises revenue share even as their market share declines, and vice versa.
Bottom line: the metric you quoted has little to no value to support the claims you were trying to support with them.
Hard to say, because Android pretending to be open, and being the subject of a take-over was in the public eye long before there was a viable product.
On the other hand, iOS wasn't even called iOS until quite some time after iPhone and iPod touch were available.
Also, Android pre-iOS was a very different beast, more like a feature phone OS. It was quickly adapted to look and work much like the iPhone, once the iPhone's success became clear.
So from that point of view, it's legitimate to say, that Android pre-iOS was actually a different product that shared some underlying technologies with what's known as Android now. The pre-iOS Android is about as similar to what's Android now, as OS X is to iOS. Same underpinnings, very different Gestalt.
Methinks some people need to get out of their bubbles. Putting together pieces of history does not make for a true story.
I'm quite familiar with what drives regular volatility. It's however not regular volatility when a stock tumbles from over 700 to a little bit more than half its price "because of growth concerns" when the stock would be valued fairly even at 0% growth given the fundamentals. Apple wasn't a stock that was overhyped on overly optimistic growth expectations, it was always quite conservatively valued even near its peak.
To anyone doing technical trading, it was however clear that after such a steep run up to 700, the stock would make a pause, and a stock making a pause is useless for trading. So generating a lot of negative analyst coverage is bound to kick the stock down somewhat, so there's a profitable trade. And that the stock created a surprisingly large downward momentum is likely due to the fact that a lot of non-savvy investors bought into Apple, maybe even leveraged or otherwise overextended with their investments, who got margin squeezed or did panic sales, which created a positive feedback cycle.
None of that comes at a surprise for professional investors, who have access to statistics on holdings, margin borrowing, etc.
Just like during the tech bubble analysts talked stocks up way past any reasonable price for the purpose of generating trading profits, so analysts can drive profits by talking a stock down. Analysts role in the stock market is just as questionable as that of the ratings agencies in the mortgage backed securities market that brought the financial crisis upon us. They create a false sense of security and stampedes in either direction depending on which side they come down, and they are not the disinterested parties they pretend to be, because they need to get paid; they are not tenured college professors who occasionally give some friendly advice, they write their reports for profit, and are not paid by the line like a freelance reporter in the local newspaper...
It is precisely because of Android's open source nature that Samsung's software additions and modifications actually exist. Think about it; you don't see many of the same features on Samsung's Windows mobile and Windows 8 devices, and Samsung does not market those devices nearly as much around features. That Samsung isn't marketing its smartphones around its add-on features rather than Android does not necessarily have anything to do with that.
In the same way, Apple's use of Intel to augment its technology has created application compatibility and enabled better performance that are part of what give Apple reasonable success today, because the Intel technology inside Apple's products is an integral part of providing the experience that Apple buyers want.
With that, your opinion on how open doesn't always win is invalid.
When you look at what open source can create and do, even if the end result from a venture into working with what is (or was at one point) open source is proprietary, open always wins.
And honestly, droidftw's comment. Success doesn't revolve around making the most money, and the amount of global Android market-share is more than disproving that outdated theory.
Wrong. The original assertion was that Linux killed Windows in the server space which if true MS would have a small share of the revenue, not the largest share of server revenue. I assert that Linux did nothing of the sort and windows server revenue shows that MS retains huge market share for business servers. There is zero metrics that show that Linux killed windows on servers.
And yes, you do have to provide installed base numbers if you wish to say that revenue doesn't matter and installed base does. THAT was your "claim". For all you know windows server installed base is larger than linux anyway and you can't show otherwise.
I made no claims regarding the relative market share or usage penetration of either system. I only pointed out that the data you provided is useless in supporting any claims regarding that particular debate.
To show this in an extreme example: if there are one billion Linux server using a free distribution, and only a single, paid Windows Server installation, Windows Server will have 100% revenue share, even though it has only a one-billionth of the installed base.
While in reality, the figures won't be that slanted, it clearly shows that the kind of statistic cited does not provide conclusive evidence in regards to the matter discussed.
Since I made no claims on either side of this argument, I don't have to do anything but show the plainly obvious that the numbers quoted are meaningless in the context of the particular debate.
Android by itself didn't make Sammy successful. Sammy added proprietary features to its phones while also copying a successful closed OS. If it were just Android, why is no one making any money selling it.
And market share doesn't make a success. If it did, Sammy would be giving away its phones. That's even more outdated.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
I made no claims regarding the relative market share or usage penetration of either system. I only pointed out that the data you provided is useless in supporting any claims regarding that particular debate.
You made a claim. These are your exact words:
Quote:
You'd have to compare number installations, not revenue,
Why do I need to compare number installations vs revenue to disprove that Linux killed Windows in the server space? The data provided completely disproves the death of Windows in the server space unless you consider the largest share of revenue to be dead.
Quote:
To show this in an extreme example: if there are one billion Linux server using a free distribution, and only a single, paid Windows Server installation, Windows Server will have 100% revenue share, even though it has only a one-billionth of the installed base.
While in reality, the figures won't be that slanted, it clearly shows that the kind of statistic cited does not provide conclusive evidence in regards to the matter discussed.
Since I made no claims on either side of this argument, I don't have to do anything but show the plainly obvious that the numbers quoted are meaningless in the context of the particular debate.
The fact is that you couldn't read a simple paragraph and determine that revenue share was the relevant fact and not "revenue increases". Given that you seem to have no clue as to what the hell the "debate" is about your opinion means little. To refresh the original assertion by rgwebb1469 was:
Quote:
"The stagnation of Microsoft was a two front battle with Mac and iOS devices on the consumer side and LAMP stack on the enterprise IT side."
Even in the LAMP stronghold MS/IIS retain 30% share and ASP .NET remains a major server stack technology. There was no two front battle any more than iOS and Android was engaged in a head to head battle in the US market until recently. Both Apple and Android was destroying Nokia and RIM share. Likewise both Windows Server and Linux was destroying Solaris, HPUX, AIX and IRIX share. When the market stabilized you have pretty much what we have today. Old school IBM and old school unix on big iron, linux for web servers and HPC and windows everywhere else. The US smartphone market has stabilized and you see the same iOS creep upwards against Android that you see OSX vs Windows. Small but upward.
Frankly, the school is still out whether Windows is dead at all. It will certainly maintain majority share on workstations and professional desktop and laptops. OSX is not about to dethrone it. As far as tablets go it's still a race for 2nd place. I think Wintel has legs for the business tablet market. Haswell will make for a good hybrid ultrabook/tablet combo and if Win8 looks like Vista remember that Win7 followed relatively quickly after Vista.
Microsoft has not stagnated as much as stumble badly on new execution. Who, other than Apple, is actually well positioned to take advantage of that stumble? Virus infected Android? No. Linux? The only contender is Ubuntu and that's as much a forlorn hope as on the desktop. Chrome? Not likely.
Even iOS isn't THAT well positioned to take massive share of the business tablet market.
I made no claims regarding the relative market share or usage penetration of either system. I only pointed out that the data you provided is useless in supporting any claims regarding that particular debate.
[/QUOTE]
You made a claim. These are your exact words:
[QUOTE]
You'd have to compare number installations, not revenue,
[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE]
This is a statement about methodology, not about whether or not Linux did or didn't kill Windows.
[quote name="nht" url="/t/158383/editorial-apple-google-and-the-failure-of-androids-open/200#post_2359193"]
Why do I need to compare number installations vs revenue to disprove that Linux killed Windows in the server space? The data provided completely disproves the death of Windows in the server space unless you consider the largest share of revenue to be dead.
[/QUOTE]
I don't consider anything, because I didn't make any claims regarding whether or not Linux did or didn't kill Windows.
However, largest revenue share means nothing when the opponent of matter is a free product, as I amply illustrated by taking it ad absurdum with only a single-for-pay server installation in the world left, while billions of free Linux servers are running the rest of the compute universe: in that case Windows enjoys a 100% revenue share, but it's still very dead.
Besides, for Linux to kill Windows it doesn't have to be dead, just beaten: when the Yankees kill the Red Sox, there are no bodies in the ball park, and the Red Sox franchise is far from bankrupt afterwards. But the Yankees still kill the Red Sox, as is evident when comparing the number of won Championships.
Further, as you point out yourself, the original claim (not made by me) is:
[QUOTE]
"The stagnation of Microsoft was a two front battle with Mac and iOS devices on the consumer side and LAMP stack on the enterprise IT side."
[/QUOTE]
and STAGNATION is about lack of growth, massively slowed growth, shrinkage of market share/installed base. All of these can be true all the while Windows still is able to hold the largest revenue share when the opposing product is free. I make no assertions as to whether that is the case or not, but that your measure of relative success is inadequate to make any point in this discussion.
Not sure about which part of "free is not measurable in revenue" is so hard to understand?
Quote:
Originally Posted by rcfa
Not sure about which part of "free is not measurable in revenue" is so hard to understand?
Because free doesn't exist. There is always cost or there simply isn't investment. Linux exists in the enterprise primarily because of IBM and to a lesser degree HP. Linux market penetration can be see in the form of linux server sales and linux support contracts for IBM, HP, Dell and Oracle.
Businesses pay for Linux and linux servers. Even in the case of "free" Linux there is significant TCO numbers that are measurable.
The TCO numbers were measureable if they were reasonably standardized and published, but that's not in the numbers you quoted. And even if measured, they don't say much about the relative market penetration, since e.g. an internet start up may have a regular employee who does server management on the side, while a similar sized other company pays for the same server management a massive maintenance contract fee. Further, similar contracts for different products have vastly different fees, both based on perceived reputation, market power, etc. of the vendor, and on how troublesome a product is, essentially precluding any meaningful conclusions about installed base of products based on these numbers.
If someone buys a Dell server, and installs Linux on it, it counts as Dell hardware sales, not as "Linux revenue". If the same hires a Linux sysadmin it won't be reflected in Linux revenue share, either, even though both of these are part of the TCO equation.
So all you try to do here is win some points with the "nothing is free" red herring while distracting from the fact that a free product (in terms of sale price) will not register in revenue statistics.
I'd love to see some people here in any sort of even semi-rigorous philosophy class, given the illogical reasoning displayed. Sort of reminds me of the infamous Monty Python scene about the witch and wood...
People who are in a whole should stop digging.