In comp.os.linux.advocacy, bbgruff
<bbgruff@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote
on Wed, 16 Jul 2008 23:24:34 +0100
<6e7aorF5obhfU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> The Ghost In The Machine wrote:
>
>> Not to mention that 1M+ new desktops in a 500M desktop market
>> is 0.2% per year...a value that would probably be noticed if
>> the initial value is the aforementioned claimed 0.80% from
>> http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=8
>>
>> If the market was more like 250M one gets 0.4% per year, and
>> that will certainly be noticed.
>>
>> The trend for Linux
>> http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=9
>> suggests that Linux is only adding about 0.36% per year,
>> (or 0.33% over 11 months) assuming these numbers are
>> anywhere near accurate.
>>
>> That translates to 0.9M+ Linux boxes if the total desktop
>> market is 250M, and 1.8M+ Linux boxes if the total market
>> is 500M. (Admittedly there are other factors, such as the
>> growth of the entire market.)
>>
>> Perhaps 1M+ is indeed an underestimate;
>
> With respect, Ghost, I think that you are perhaps confusing
> different figures. In fact, I believe that you are confusing
> the number/% of linux desktops sold over the past year with
> the total number of Linux desktops in use!
Wouldn't surprise me. ;-) Of course there are additional
complications, the simplest one being dualboots.
>
> Let us assume (by taking estimates close to your own) that:-
>
> - A year ago, 0.44% of desktops were Linux, and today it is 0.8%
> - Let us take your figure of 250M new desktops over that year.
> - Let us (for the sake of the argument) assume that there were
> 1,000M desktops a year ago, so that there are now 1,250M
> (forget "retired" machines for the moment - this is an illustration)
OK so far.
>
> If 0.8% of new desktops were Linux, that would indicate 2M new Linux
> machines(0.8% of 250M) (Your 0.36% of 250M = 0.9M is not meaningfull - it's
> merely how many EXTRA machines you sell if your share of the 250M goes from
> 0.44 to 0.8%)
> HOWEVER, the 0.8% refers to TOTAL machines!
You're right; I also now suspect it's *all* desktops.
That makes the adoption rate for new desktops even higher;
given our assumptions:
0.44% of 1000M desktops = 4.4M Linux desktops
0.80% of 1250M desktops = 10M Linux desktops
This would require 5.6M new Linux desktops -- an adoption
rate for those 250M new desktops of about 2.24%, maximum.
Of course given Linux's nature a number of those older
desktops will be "retired" as far as Windows is concerned,
slicked over and Ubuntu or similar installed thereon, and
put back into service; a number of other desktops might
be converted into dualboots. Marketshare.hitslink.com
couldn't possibly hope to measure that, without a lot more
information than the browsers currently provide.
>
> The 0.8% is NOT a measure of market share - it is a measure of % user base!
> 0.8% of the 1,250M is about 10M, and THAT is what was being measured, however
> biased the measurement.
Yes.
> There were already (we were reckoning) 4.4M Linux desktops.
> NEW Linux desktops ( none retired) comes out at 5.6M NEW machines!
>
> 5.6M as a percentage of the total 250M sold is actually = 2.24%
>
> Please feel free to pick holes in that. I could well be wrong:-)
I see you anticipate me, and you're mostly correct; the 2.24% is
a maximum value, not a definitive one, though.
Mea culpa for being sloppy.
>
> btw, the 0.8% figure is (always) being quoted here because it's
> the LOWEST figure that the Windows enthusiasts can find:-)
>
The exact figure may never be known, as Linux isn't
sold as such -- though a fair number of sellers such as
RedHat and SuSe exist -- but can be easily given away,
to those who want it (trolls do claim no one wants it,
though, which is possibly a slightly disturbing window
into human psychology).
I have seen numbers as high as 5%, but those have since
wandered elsewither. It is possible such numbers are
being nicely buried under Microsoft Blather(tm), though,
or more important issues such as the mortgage foreclosure
rate, the inflation disaster, George Bush's latest gaffes,
or the New Yorker caricature of Osama and wife fist-bumping
it as the American flag burns (it was apparently intended
to be satire but the context of the rightwing nutjobs
imagining all this in their heads got lost somehow in the
rush to publication).
The so-called "news media" is an interesting mess nowadays;
one wonders what Walter Cronkite would think. ;-)
--
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