Complete BS! One of the things that annoys Microsoft is how long it takes their users to adopt new versions of Windows. Most corporations wait for one or even two service packs before considering an enterprise-wide change to a new OS. Microsoft is praying that the seemingly infinite beta period for Vista will convince people that it's safe to upgrade, but the high system requirements should keep Vista out of most enterprises for another couple of years. XP hasn't got and, if Vista ships in the next year, never will reach 85% of the Windows market let alone 85% of the overall OS market.
Complete BS! One of the things that annoys Microsoft is how long it takes their users to adopt new versions of Windows. Most corporations wait for one or even two service packs before considering an enterprise-wide change to a new OS. Microsoft is praying that the seemingly infinite beta period for Vista will convince people that it's safe to upgrade, but the high system requirements should keep Vista out of most enterprises for another couple of years.
Most large organizations are generally conservative with their software upgrade schedule. I don't think the slow updating is relegated to just Microsoft products, though they most deserve the conservatism. It takes a while to prove that it's worthwhile and to make sure that all their software works or has been updated for a new OS. There is the testing against all the software used by the organization, licencing costs and the time to migrate the updates and make sure it doesn't mess up somewhere. Retraining costs and a short term loss of productivity getting used to the updated software are considerations.
it's simply not possible to know the "overall usage" to any degree of precision, or the Mac OS usage by segment, much less within *two decimal places.*
WE HAVE A WINNAH
A percent is a small number multiplied by 100 to put it into a range people can deal with. This study implies that they can determine market share to FOUR SIGNIFICANT FIGURES! With most physical phenomena, you are lucky to get three sigfigs, unless you have access to high precision devices and have some way to exert fine control over the experiment.
Opinion pollsters take over a thousand samples to have a margin of error of several percentage points.
To think that they can determine a squishy statistic like market share to a higher degree of precision than many scientists and engineers can with hard science is just insane. For that reason alone, I believe the results are wholly untrustworthy.
Besides, the recent sales figures of Macintoshes suggest that the size of the Mac market is growing. In that case, market share is of little importance.
Hang about, Windows 98 has a lower market share than Mac OS X? I find that extremely hard to believe. I still know plenty of people who are stuck on Win98.
I call BS. From my own personal experience, Mac is up, and PC is down. I don't know anyone who is or has dropped a Mac and gone to PC, but I certainly know plenty who have switched to Mac.
Laptop at an all time high...low market share...does not compute.
I've been watching Net Applications a lot lately and I don't think they're monitoring is unbiased.
It's actually quite difficult to know OS usage by looking at site logs...unless you monitor all sites on the internet...which is not the case...so...ya know...these numbers mean nothing.
The desktop sales are not that high. More than half of Apple's sales at this time are laptops. That's one reason why they refreshed the iMac line with Meroms before they did the laptops.
Are there any business PhDs lurking in these forums? If so could someone please explain once again why market share seems to be THE indicator of success or failure for a company? BMW has a much lower market share than GM in terms of sales yet GM is in the toilet and BMW just keeps chugging along. Why is Apple considered a complete, total failure as a company because it doesn't have the market share of Dell? As a card carrying member of the Joe Public fraternity I just don't get it.
One doesn't have to be a PhD to understand this.
First of all:
Auto's can't be compared to computers. It would be nice if people finally understood that.
If BMW couldn't use the same gas other cars used, or the same air for their tires, or couldn't run on the same roads, or use the same water for their radiators, then the comparison would be valid. As it is, it's not.
If Apple made Windows machines so that the same software would run on them, the situation would be different as well.
If you go to a banking site, and it doesn't work with a Mac, or if you buy a game, and it doesn't work with a Mac, or anything else that you would like doesn't work with a Mac, but does work with a PC, then you have some idea as to why marketshare matters.
While some think that all that should matter is the number of machines out there, most companies supplying the software, hardware, or services that we want, don't agree.
It all comes down to percentage. If development costs are about the same for the Mac as for a PC, but the PC market is 20 times larger, which market will they work with? The same for advertising, support, etc.
That doesn't mean that there won't be companies that prefer the Mac for their products. If the Mac is strong in a particular area, then we see development. Or if a small developer finds it easier to compete in the smaller market, they will.
Otherwise it doesn't work out.
Over the past few years as Apple's marketshare plunged in this country from about 12% to about 2.8%, even as Apple's sales remained about the same. Developers fled in droves.
With it starting to come back again, we are gaining more than are leaving.
It had hit a wall the March quarter, as growth over the last years quarter was only about 5%. That was below the industrie's growth of about 10%. So marketshare declined slightly. The last quarter (June) saw growth of about 11% over last year's quarter, about inline with the PC industry. This quarter should see greater growth.
Hang about, Windows 98 has a lower market share than Mac OS X? I find that extremely hard to believe. I still know plenty of people who are stuck on Win98.
I knew about a dozen people using it as little as a year ago. But now, all of them have moved to XP.
There will always be a few people using old machines, like the "classic" computer users.
I knew a guy that was using DOS until his last machine finally died, and we almost forced him to get a new machine with XP. And no, I couldn't convince him to get a Mac?he still uses XYright!
Even if BMW only sold 1 car every year, that 1 car could drive on pretty much any road it wanted to. It might be hard to get an oil change at Jiffy Lube however as they don't stock oil filters for the 1 BMW on the road.
Now take the car analogy and apply it to the computer industry. Because there are so few Mac users, many web developers don't hesitate to require the use of ActiveX controls or even muck up their Java! so that it only works on a PC running Internet Explorer 6 or higher. In the same way have you seen any new software released for the Amiga lately? No, because it isn't economically feasible to devote a lot of resources to a tiny potential market.
This is why you can't get AutoCad for Mac. They used to make AutoCad for the Mac but becuse the marketshare dipped so low they stopped developing it.
Johnny, I didn't get to your post before I posted mine. But some reinforcement never hurts.
The graph shows that Mac OS has 3.71%, while the article talks about 4.33%. For me, this makes the article even more bogus -- unless these are actually measurements of different things, and I'm missing some detail somewhere.
Not everyone uses Safari, and some even use the internet on a PC, even though they may have a Mac.
I have a fairly popular site that caters to no specific platform and doesn't exclude any browser.
From my own stats, the Mac usage share has been climbing steadily for the last 2 years (since the Mac Mini was released). The lowest it ever been on my site was 3.98%. It currently stands at 5.06%; the highest I've ever seen since I started tracking browser and platform numbers.
I don't get my numbers from analysing logs. I have the data stored in the database whenever a user logs in. The number of users is about 130,000 so it's a fairly representative slice of users.
And for the person that couldn't believe the low number of windows 98 users. Their share stands at 5.01% currently.
Granted, this is a single site, but it's a large one, and platform-neutral and browser-neutral.
As far as I can tell from my own data, there can be no explanation to their numbers other than incompetence or bias.
What is seen at one site, even if it is fairly popular, isn't representitive of what is seen at many sites.
Complete BS! One of the things that annoys Microsoft is how long it takes their users to adopt new versions of Windows. Most corporations wait for one or even two service packs before considering an enterprise-wide change to a new OS. Microsoft is praying that the seemingly infinite beta period for Vista will convince people that it's safe to upgrade, but the high system requirements should keep Vista out of most enterprises for another couple of years. XP hasn't got and, if Vista ships in the next year, never will reach 85% of the Windows market let alone 85% of the overall OS market.
This is an easy one.
When MS came out with XP, just as they had done with all of their OS's before, they stopped supplying 2000 for ALL retail machines. By the time XP came out, more machines were being sold retail tyhan direct to large businesses. Small business owners have to buy retail, meaning all machines including white box ones supplied by stores and small manufacturers.
Over the next few years large corporations had upped their usage of XP to over 50%.
So, most are using XP by now. What the exact number is, I don't know, but 85% doesn't sound all that far off. It is likely a bit high, but not by much.
The same thing will happen to Vista. When 2000 came out, they were saying the same thing about requirements, also with XP.
In fact, they said the same thing about all of IBM and MS's OS's. You likely don't know about the fights about the heavy requirements for the first rev of NT.
In the same newsletter, the firm erroneously reported that Apple's iPod unit shipments hit an all time high at 12 million units in one quarter before stumbling.
"iPod sales peaked at over 12 million units for the 4th quarter of 2005, but have stumbled to 8.5 million and 8.1 million units the most recent two quarters," the firm wrote.
iPod sales actually peaked during Apple's first fiscal quarter of 2006, in which it sold over 14 million of the players.
Technically what was written is true. The company's first fiscal quarter for 2006 is the last calendar quarter of 2005. So, it depends whether you're talking calendar or fiscal. But the last quarter of 2005 did sell over 12 million units (14 million is over 12 million, right?)
Johnny, I didn't get to your post before I posted mine. But some reinforcement never hurts.
As a software dev I call BS on the road argument. First there's java. Second there's gcc and portage. Third there's mono. Fourth there's Firefox. Fifth there is Parallels. Sixth there's Boot Camp. Finally, there's Apple which has not been too shy about writing software it considers critical.
Plenty of "roads" and being the one of the few "gas station" on those roads can be very profitable. So long as there is sufficiently large market base there will be sufficient software.
There is nothing wrong with the BMW analogy and Apple is happily profitable pursuing that strategy.
It's impossible to measure Linux distro usage properly. All anyone can do is guess.
Somewhat true, and this is the case for all questions of userbase. Period.
Statistics can be useful for guessing close though and I can't concieve of any valid methodologies that would yeild anything like the numbers reported by these bozos.
Comments
Complete BS! One of the things that annoys Microsoft is how long it takes their users to adopt new versions of Windows. Most corporations wait for one or even two service packs before considering an enterprise-wide change to a new OS. Microsoft is praying that the seemingly infinite beta period for Vista will convince people that it's safe to upgrade, but the high system requirements should keep Vista out of most enterprises for another couple of years.
Most large organizations are generally conservative with their software upgrade schedule. I don't think the slow updating is relegated to just Microsoft products, though they most deserve the conservatism. It takes a while to prove that it's worthwhile and to make sure that all their software works or has been updated for a new OS. There is the testing against all the software used by the organization, licencing costs and the time to migrate the updates and make sure it doesn't mess up somewhere. Retraining costs and a short term loss of productivity getting used to the updated software are considerations.
it's simply not possible to know the "overall usage" to any degree of precision, or the Mac OS usage by segment, much less within *two decimal places.*
WE HAVE A WINNAH
A percent is a small number multiplied by 100 to put it into a range people can deal with. This study implies that they can determine market share to FOUR SIGNIFICANT FIGURES! With most physical phenomena, you are lucky to get three sigfigs, unless you have access to high precision devices and have some way to exert fine control over the experiment.
Opinion pollsters take over a thousand samples to have a margin of error of several percentage points.
To think that they can determine a squishy statistic like market share to a higher degree of precision than many scientists and engineers can with hard science is just insane. For that reason alone, I believe the results are wholly untrustworthy.
Besides, the recent sales figures of Macintoshes suggest that the size of the Mac market is growing. In that case, market share is of little importance.
Hang about, Windows 98 has a lower market share than Mac OS X? I find that extremely hard to believe. I still know plenty of people who are stuck on Win98.
Yes, but they don't use the internet.
I call BS. From my own personal experience, Mac is up, and PC is down. I don't know anyone who is or has dropped a Mac and gone to PC, but I certainly know plenty who have switched to Mac.
Ditto.
Laptop at an all time high...low market share...does not compute.
I've been watching Net Applications a lot lately and I don't think they're monitoring is unbiased.
It's actually quite difficult to know OS usage by looking at site logs...unless you monitor all sites on the internet...which is not the case...so...ya know...these numbers mean nothing.
The desktop sales are not that high. More than half of Apple's sales at this time are laptops. That's one reason why they refreshed the iMac line with Meroms before they did the laptops.
Are there any business PhDs lurking in these forums? If so could someone please explain once again why market share seems to be THE indicator of success or failure for a company? BMW has a much lower market share than GM in terms of sales yet GM is in the toilet and BMW just keeps chugging along. Why is Apple considered a complete, total failure as a company because it doesn't have the market share of Dell? As a card carrying member of the Joe Public fraternity I just don't get it.
One doesn't have to be a PhD to understand this.
First of all:
Auto's can't be compared to computers. It would be nice if people finally understood that.
If BMW couldn't use the same gas other cars used, or the same air for their tires, or couldn't run on the same roads, or use the same water for their radiators, then the comparison would be valid. As it is, it's not.
If Apple made Windows machines so that the same software would run on them, the situation would be different as well.
If you go to a banking site, and it doesn't work with a Mac, or if you buy a game, and it doesn't work with a Mac, or anything else that you would like doesn't work with a Mac, but does work with a PC, then you have some idea as to why marketshare matters.
While some think that all that should matter is the number of machines out there, most companies supplying the software, hardware, or services that we want, don't agree.
It all comes down to percentage. If development costs are about the same for the Mac as for a PC, but the PC market is 20 times larger, which market will they work with? The same for advertising, support, etc.
That doesn't mean that there won't be companies that prefer the Mac for their products. If the Mac is strong in a particular area, then we see development. Or if a small developer finds it easier to compete in the smaller market, they will.
Otherwise it doesn't work out.
Over the past few years as Apple's marketshare plunged in this country from about 12% to about 2.8%, even as Apple's sales remained about the same. Developers fled in droves.
With it starting to come back again, we are gaining more than are leaving.
It had hit a wall the March quarter, as growth over the last years quarter was only about 5%. That was below the industrie's growth of about 10%. So marketshare declined slightly. The last quarter (June) saw growth of about 11% over last year's quarter, about inline with the PC industry. This quarter should see greater growth.
Hang about, Windows 98 has a lower market share than Mac OS X? I find that extremely hard to believe. I still know plenty of people who are stuck on Win98.
I knew about a dozen people using it as little as a year ago. But now, all of them have moved to XP.
There will always be a few people using old machines, like the "classic" computer users.
I knew a guy that was using DOS until his last machine finally died, and we almost forced him to get a new machine with XP. And no, I couldn't convince him to get a Mac?he still uses XYright!
Zero mention of Linux anyone? By most accounts still a larger userbase than OS X, that missing alone is a red flag of galatic proportions.
It's impossible to measure Linux distro usage properly. All anyone can do is guess.
Even if BMW only sold 1 car every year, that 1 car could drive on pretty much any road it wanted to. It might be hard to get an oil change at Jiffy Lube however as they don't stock oil filters for the 1 BMW on the road.
Now take the car analogy and apply it to the computer industry. Because there are so few Mac users, many web developers don't hesitate to require the use of ActiveX controls or even muck up their Java! so that it only works on a PC running Internet Explorer 6 or higher. In the same way have you seen any new software released for the Amiga lately? No, because it isn't economically feasible to devote a lot of resources to a tiny potential market.
This is why you can't get AutoCad for Mac. They used to make AutoCad for the Mac but becuse the marketshare dipped so low they stopped developing it.
Johnny, I didn't get to your post before I posted mine. But some reinforcement never hurts.
The graph shows that Mac OS has 3.71%, while the article talks about 4.33%. For me, this makes the article even more bogus -- unless these are actually measurements of different things, and I'm missing some detail somewhere.
Not everyone uses Safari, and some even use the internet on a PC, even though they may have a Mac.
I have a fairly popular site that caters to no specific platform and doesn't exclude any browser.
From my own stats, the Mac usage share has been climbing steadily for the last 2 years (since the Mac Mini was released). The lowest it ever been on my site was 3.98%. It currently stands at 5.06%; the highest I've ever seen since I started tracking browser and platform numbers.
I don't get my numbers from analysing logs. I have the data stored in the database whenever a user logs in. The number of users is about 130,000 so it's a fairly representative slice of users.
And for the person that couldn't believe the low number of windows 98 users. Their share stands at 5.01% currently.
Granted, this is a single site, but it's a large one, and platform-neutral and browser-neutral.
As far as I can tell from my own data, there can be no explanation to their numbers other than incompetence or bias.
What is seen at one site, even if it is fairly popular, isn't representitive of what is seen at many sites.
Complete BS! One of the things that annoys Microsoft is how long it takes their users to adopt new versions of Windows. Most corporations wait for one or even two service packs before considering an enterprise-wide change to a new OS. Microsoft is praying that the seemingly infinite beta period for Vista will convince people that it's safe to upgrade, but the high system requirements should keep Vista out of most enterprises for another couple of years. XP hasn't got and, if Vista ships in the next year, never will reach 85% of the Windows market let alone 85% of the overall OS market.
This is an easy one.
When MS came out with XP, just as they had done with all of their OS's before, they stopped supplying 2000 for ALL retail machines. By the time XP came out, more machines were being sold retail tyhan direct to large businesses. Small business owners have to buy retail, meaning all machines including white box ones supplied by stores and small manufacturers.
Over the next few years large corporations had upped their usage of XP to over 50%.
So, most are using XP by now. What the exact number is, I don't know, but 85% doesn't sound all that far off. It is likely a bit high, but not by much.
The same thing will happen to Vista. When 2000 came out, they were saying the same thing about requirements, also with XP.
In fact, they said the same thing about all of IBM and MS's OS's. You likely don't know about the fights about the heavy requirements for the first rev of NT.
We couldn't make any company code anything for OS/2 as there was perfect , better than real DOS and windows (3.1) compatibility.
They simply sent instructions how to install windows support to OS/2 to make their program work (!).
In the same newsletter, the firm erroneously reported that Apple's iPod unit shipments hit an all time high at 12 million units in one quarter before stumbling.
"iPod sales peaked at over 12 million units for the 4th quarter of 2005, but have stumbled to 8.5 million and 8.1 million units the most recent two quarters," the firm wrote.
iPod sales actually peaked during Apple's first fiscal quarter of 2006, in which it sold over 14 million of the players.
Technically what was written is true. The company's first fiscal quarter for 2006 is the last calendar quarter of 2005. So, it depends whether you're talking calendar or fiscal. But the last quarter of 2005 did sell over 12 million units (14 million is over 12 million, right?)
Johnny, I didn't get to your post before I posted mine. But some reinforcement never hurts.
As a software dev I call BS on the road argument. First there's java. Second there's gcc and portage. Third there's mono. Fourth there's Firefox. Fifth there is Parallels. Sixth there's Boot Camp. Finally, there's Apple which has not been too shy about writing software it considers critical.
Plenty of "roads" and being the one of the few "gas station" on those roads can be very profitable. So long as there is sufficiently large market base there will be sufficient software.
There is nothing wrong with the BMW analogy and Apple is happily profitable pursuing that strategy.
Vinea
It's impossible to measure Linux distro usage properly. All anyone can do is guess.
Somewhat true, and this is the case for all questions of userbase. Period.
Statistics can be useful for guessing close though and I can't concieve of any valid methodologies that would yeild anything like the numbers reported by these bozos.