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.