What Will We Use on June 30, 2011?

When I first saw bug 1, “Microsoft has a majority market share” I felt disappointed in the Cannonical and Ubuntu for measuring itself in an adversarial manner instead of concentrating its efforts of making Ubuntu the best operating system ever. I also felt compassion for those who enjoy Microsoft products and accepted that Microsoft would always have a strong market presence. People will use the best product for them. All of that has changed. I feel like I’m on top of mountain watching a few pebbles shift. I can feel the avalanche coming. I see many causes in motion. Microsoft’s current business practices are the wind that gives speed to the pebbles. All I am doing here is delivering a notice that unless several of these causes halt soon, the change will come exponentially in an yielding fashion. In a way, I am more than just an observer. With my work with The Ohio Linuxfest the fruits are not measurable. Even if bug one wasn’t communicated, I would still be a free software idealist who is happy to see what is afoot. The facts will come out more in future posts but I am sure that Microsoft feels threatened. It’s GandhiCon3 time. As Eric Raymond pointed out “First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”

Microsoft is striving for majority market share for all that they do. World domination is their plan so this 2 year voyage is based on the scope of all computing on planet earth. Currently has has their fingers or at least a few toes in everything that is computing. We are not limiting this to new deployments. I’m more interested in what is being actually used.

For example…
A desktop that comes with a Windows license can receive the “patch” of another operating system and then “bug one” is “fixed.” I ask you, the Internet, the favor of declaring to the world in a place visible by a search engine of the resolution. With that said, I hearby announce that my Compaq C770 came with a Vista license but I never agreed to the EULA. I installed Ubutnu before first boot. Nick admits that the Linux installbase is far greater than reported due to unreported deployments. The Microsoft tax is another post for another day.

The point of this post is to track where the market share of Microsoft has a chance of being prevalent in Qtr 2 2011 along with my current estimates of Microsoft market share. If someone has a suggestion for another area of concentration to track, please do mention it.

A. Desktops/Laptops 75%

B. Browsers 40%

C. Office Suites 90% (Google Docs counts. I’m not sure if I should count absence from an Office Suite in the market share breakdown)

D. Servers 30% – defined as a COTS machine providing a service such as www, email, databases, file share, etc. Voip is a different animal and will be tracked seperately, clarity requested by beeporama

E. Video Game Consoles 10% – defined has must hookup to a television or other monitor, clarity requested by
beeporama

F. Mobile Phone 5% (the words Blackberry and iPhone are competing to be the Kleenex in the smartphone market. I see Microsoft not as relevant, but fxchip asked so I’m tracking it. Any non Microsoft branded phone counts)

I will make posts from time to time with actual stats and other stories of where things are going.

While I was at the first SouthEast LinuxFest a few weeks ago, I made some bold claims.

“Microsoft will no longer have the majority market share in 24 months” I said.

Even though I was among free and open source neighbors, I was greeted with “Sorry. Not going to happen!” each time except when I said it to Nicholas A. Schembri. Nick decided to hold me to this claim by making a wager.

If Microsoft has majority market share on June 30 2011, I will owe Nick twenty US dollars.

This blog will serve as a way to keep track of the progress over the next two years.  During this time I will seek nothing but the truth. Bad things will be said about Microsoft, Apple, Linux, Open Source, and Free Software if it is a fact. I will also site evidence that Microsoft’s current business practices are unstainable and evidence that people are favoring the ideals of the alternatives.

My claim is basically bug one but I need to clear up some things right away.

• I am not part of the Ubuntu community beyond a user. I also use Red Hat, SuSE, PalmOS and Microsoft Windows. Once upon a time I ran Fedora, IRIX, MacOSX, DOS, *BSD and Solaris too but those days are mostly beyond me. Nor am I on the payroll of Canonical.
• I consume massive amounts of technology therefore I could be outside the 80% that Nick is talking about. My career as a system administrator for the past 10 years has been mostly working in environments that are not effected by bug one.  Therefore, I will have to look outside my comfort zone.
• Bug one discusses the desktop market, but computing is larger than that. Microsoft has a whole suite of products in many markets: the console video gaming market, mapping, embedded, home media, high performance computing… I can’t finish this list tonight! This blog will be about finding out what markets Microsoft is a part of and how well they are doing.
• Despite the previous bullet, I assert that Microsoft lacks market share in all that it attempts except for two areas: 1. desktop (laptop and a PC on your desk) 2. office suites applications. If you can think of an area where Microsoft excels, respond and I’ll look into it.
• If you don’t want to read this discussion, you can unfriend me and I will understand. On the other hand, if you are a user of computing resources who wants to have an intelligent discussion, then you will be allowed to post a comment even if you are not a friend.  I’m starting this by allowing all comments, even unauthenticated users. If that turns out to be too spammy I might reconsider.

OK?