What Will We Use on June 30, 2011?

Thanks for hanging in there folks for the What Will We Use Browser and Operating Systems reports. In February, we had 1,691 unique readers. This is amazing considering that I have not had time to post much.

Nonetheless, Microsoft continues to creatively self-destruct. While Microsoft fails to sell Windows 7 to XP users, Apple’s market share picks up. How can Steve Ballmer justify his raise? I’m sorry but patent extortion of I-O Data’s Linux devices and Amazon’s Kindle are not work product. Meanwhile, Google’s Linux-based products grow market share exponentially. Google has not been sued because Google would not be the type to pay out of court. Is Microsoft turning into a litigation company? How did that strategy work out for the bankrupt SCO? As I already pointed out, being in court all of the time distracts Microsoft from making real technology that people actually want to use. If Microsoft could sell software on the open market profitably, why are they on the patent lawsuit FUD warpath?

Since Microsoft lost their own patent battle to the tune of $290 million to I4i over Word 2007, maybe they find it safer to sue other companies than make browsers, office suites, and operating systems. Go ahead Microsoft and mock Firefox’s success, you only look like jealous crybabies babies.

The writing is on the wall, Microsoft has lost in the long term. Gartner’s 2008 prediction of open source having majority market share in 2012 is really growing roots. Come June 30, 2011, Microsoft’s fate will be clear, until then, I will bring your my market share reports and other commentary.

This month I decided to compare my percentages to W3Counter, a no-cost analytic service that shares their global market share figures on a monthly basis.

We are worlds apart on the browser market share, but as far as the operating systems go, there are areas where we agree save Windows XP and Linux…

And now for the browsers…

What do you think world? What will March of 2010 hold in store for us on our journey to understand what will we use come June 30, 2011?

Yesterday was Groundhog Day. It is a fun American tradition where a large rodent from Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania “whispers” in his caretakers ear to declare early spring or six more weeks of winter on each year of February 2. Everybody knows that winter has to end. Most want winter to end soon, save those who enjoy snow-related sports. We all logically know that a groundhog has no control over the weather, yet these predictions are followed by millions of Americans with hope for sunny days ahead.

Today, I, a life-long Pennsylvania resident I declare early victory with 1/3 of the bet behind this blog: Microsoft will no longer have majority market share on June 30, 2011.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Microsoft no longer has a majority browser market share.

W3Counter watched the traffic of the 32,245 customer websites for the 31 days of January 2010 and reported 49.7% Internet Explorer use. I knew this day was afoot and I predicted IE’s demise at the end February 2010 two months ago. Thanks to all of you who signed up for a free w3counter account, we all get the best global market share reports.

Dan Grossman of W3Counter, also of Pennsylvania, put together these beautiful graphs that show the trends specific to Microsoft Internet Explorer’s demise. Observe the users of the legacy product, Internet Explorer 6 declining over time and look how other Microsoft products fail to directly answer the version 6 loss.

As far as browsers go, the “what will we use” question has been answered: Open source browsers such as Firefox and Chrome seem to be taking Microsoft’s market share. GandhiCon 4 here we come.

Sure, I am a crazy Linux using, free software loving, groundhog watching, winter loathing, anti-Microsoft FUD spreading, Pennsylvanian who correctly predicted browser market share.

Yet another amazing month as December brought in 5,170 new visitors with over 18,000 visitors in total.

Before I get started, I need to apologize that the commenter browser/OS detection plug-in, Browser Sniff, has been reporting falsely for Chrome-based browsers and Windows 7. I use with w3counter for my monthly reports which has nothing to do with Browser Sniff. Rest assured, the reports from w3counter are right on. Just to be sure, I also subscribe to Google Analytics and the numbers line up, month after month.

My preference for web analytic service and market share reports is w3counter. If you have a website and you would like to have some no-cost information on your visitors, sign up for w3counter. Nor do you you need a fancy website, programming skills, or your own domain name. If you can paste one line of html/javascript into your index.html, you too can use w3counter. Everybody can do this. This is another unpaid endorsement from a very happy w3counter customer.

Now onto the browser report of the whatwillweuse.com visitors for the month of December 2009

1     Firefox 3.5      68%
2     Firefox 3.0     13%
3     Internet Explorer 8.0 4%
4     Mozilla 1.9 3%
5     Safari 4.0 2%
6     Chrome 4.0 2%
7     Chrome 3.0 1%
8     Internet Explorer 7.0 1%
9     Identification Blocked 1%
Less than 1% goes to Internet Explorer 6.0

And the Operating System Report of visitors of whatwillweuse.com

1      Windows XP 28%
2     Windows Vista 18%
3     Windows 7 18%

The top 3 make 64%. Where are you team Linux and Apple?

4     Linux 17%
5     Mac OS X 14%
6     Unknown 3%
Less than 1% goes to Windows 2003, iPhone OSX, Windows 2000, iPhone OSX, Windows 2000 and Android. One sole FreeBSD user. Zero ChromeOS visitors yet.

Note: If you read whatwillweuse.com through RSS or a planet feed, your visit is not recorded. Only those who browse whatwillweuse.com are recorded. Therefore, in order to be counted, please type http://whatwillweuse.com at your browser at least once a month. Link-love is always appreciated. Thanks!

Click on the W3Counter logo to see the Browser/Operating system global report for December 2009. Note that the IE global market share is 50.3% according to w3counter. Soon enough, Microsoft will no longer have claim to majority browser market share.

November 2009 was yet another amazing month with 8,450 unique visitors.

That is over 265% growth from October. Since mid July, we will have close to 15,000 unique visitors and growing. In full disclosure, much of the November traffic happened due to someone submitting us to stumbleupon.com. Thank you whomever you are.

No matter how you found us, welcome. This blog is tracking the downfall of Microsoft. It started when Nick bet Beth Lynn $20 that Microsoft would still have majority market share in June 2011. Imagine turning on your computer and not seeing Windows, Internet Explorer or Microsoft Office. More than half of the computing population will do just that if Beth Lynn wins the bet. Civil discussion, even if you are on the Microsoft payroll, is encouraged here.

We use w3counter, an analytics service, to track what our readers are using. By doing so, whatwillweuse.com contributes to a 30,000+ website community which results in the the w3counter global market share report. Anybody can sign up. It is free as long as you have only one website which gets less than 5000 daily visitors. Even if you are already using a paid service, why not give w3counter a try? It is simple to setup too.

W3counter will give you all sorts of information on your visitors such as somebody found this site by typing “is MS Money 95 compatible ble with windows 7″ into a search engine. Just in case that was a serious question, I will answer: Please give gnucash a try and report back. Gnucash is free accounting software that runs on
Linux, MacOSX, and Windows. Thanks!

First the whatwillweuse.com November 2009 browser report

Firefox         10,514    74%
Safari             1,132    8%
Mozilla         844     6%
Internet Explorer     555     4%
Identification Blocked     408     3%
Chrome             364 3%
Opera, Sea Monkey, iPhone, Rippers, Konqueror all had less than 1%

Now the whatwillweuse.com November 2009 operating system report
1      Linux      4,026     28%
2     Windows XP     3,456    24%
3     Mac OS X     2,459    17%
4     Windows Vista     2,008    14%
5     Windows 7     1,505    11%
6     Unknown     591    4%
Windows 2003, iPhone OSX, Windows 2000, Android, SunOS, and Palm all
had less than 1%

The month of October was simply amazing. We had 3,170 unique ip addresses. When we compare it to our 869 visitors of September, that is over 350% growth. Admittedly, the increased traffic was due to a news-worthy incident that occurred in the open source community involving two of the editors of this blog. While this did increase the traffic, it was a distraction from the intended message.

This blog is only 4 months old but since we have so many new readers, it is worth restating some high points. I, Beth Lynn Eicher, bet $20 that Microsoft’s market share would be less than 50% on June 30, 2011. I am not insulted if you think I am crazy for making this claim. Every plan begins with a “YES we can!” vision. You do not need to agree with me to follow this blog.  Please comment if you disagree, especially if you are on the Microsoft payroll. All that is required is some genuine interest in intelligent discussion on Microsoft’s market share over the next 20 months. So far, the readers have been primarily from the Open Source community but this blog is also for Microsoft users so that they can discuss their satisfaction levels of Microsoft products.

The work of providing actual market share trend figures is difficult to do, especially since whatwillweuse.com is an leisure effort. I lack a marketing budget in which to buy professional projections which cost thousands of dollars. Instead, I use w3counter, a free web statistics service for websites and blogs, and follow their global statistics. In my opinion, w3counter gives the most accurate values because it allows regular people like me to allow the people in my social network to be counted. Competing products are only available to those with products to sell which I suspect is heavily weighted by what professional buyers are using in wealthy English speaking countries. Since quite a few Search Engine Optimization blogs have linked my post on how and why w3counter is useful to you, me, and everybody, I am convinced that community-oriented web statistics with w3counter yield excellent results. If you are a blogger of any sort and want to get some free statistics on who your readers are, I highly recommend w3counter, regardless of what operating system and web browser you use.

Alright, on with the statistics arleady. Here is the traffic we observed on whatwillweuse.com out of 3,170 unique visitors….

First Web Browsers:

1. Firefox      3,398      58%
2. Safari     815     14%
3. Mozilla     551     9%
4. Identification Blocked     335     6%
5. Internet Explorer     275     5%
6. Chrome     207     4%
7. Opera     70     1%

Operating Systems:

1.  Linux      2,524      43%
2.  Mac OS X     1,174     20%
3.  Windows XP     1,101     19%
4.  Unknown     415     7%
5.  Windows Vista     371     6%
6.  Windows 7     168     3%
7.  iPhone OSX     38     <1%

Click on the W3Counter logo to see the Browser/Operating system global report for October 2009

Notes on the global browser statistics:

Microsoft has less than 52% market share if you include IE6 which Microsoft no longer supported by Microsoft. If you ignore IE6 because it is a retired product as far as Microsoft is concerned,  Microsoft has only 38.39% of the browser market share.

Notes on the global operating systems:

These statistics do not break out full licensed copies of Windows 7 from the Release Candidate. Keep in mind that both MacOSX and Linux increased their market share during the month of the Windows 7 launch.

Notes on global diversity:

64.2% of the statistics are from non-English speaking countries.

Microsoft will have less than 50% market share on June 30, 2011.

In September 2009, whatwillweuse.com had 869 unquie visitors.

1      Linux      1,336      50%
2     Mac OS X     490     18%
3     Windows XP     403     15%
4     Unknown     185     7%
5     Windows Vista     129     5%
6     Windows 7     64     2%
7      iPhone OSX      15      <1%
8     Windows 2000     11     <1%
9     Windows 2003     10     <1%
10     Palm     3     <1%
11     SunOS     3     <1%
12     Windows 98     2     <1%
13     Android     1     <1%

Click on the W3Counter logo to see the global report for September 2009. Note that Windows 7 surpassed Linux on the global status. Another interesting fact, MacOS averages about +0.5% growth each month.

In September 2009, whatwillweuse.com had 869 unquie visitors.

1. Firefox      1,537      58%
2. Safari     419     16%
3. Mozilla     274     10%
4. Identification Blocked     143     5%
5. Internet Explorer     115     4%
6. Chrome     54     2%

Other browsers recieving less than 1%:

• Opera
• Konqueror
• iPhone
• Rippers
• Opera Mini
• Iceweasel
• Nutch
• Snap
• K-Meleon
• Handspring Blazer
• Feeds Syndicators
• iPod Touch
• Android
• BlackBerry
• NetFront
• Inktomi
• Netscape
• Nokia
• Twiceler

Click on the W3Counter logo to see the global report for September 2009

This is a report of the Operating Systems that were used by the readers of www.whatwillweuse.com

1. Firefox     1,270     60%
2. Safari     297     14%
3. Mozilla     238     11%
4. Internet Explorer     89     4%
5. Identification Blocked     85     4%
6. Chrome     45     2%
7. Opera     20     <1%
8. Konqueror     15     <1%
9. iPhone     13     <1%

Click on the W3Counter logo to see the global report for August 2009

This is a report of the Operating Systems that were used by the readers of www.whatwillweuse.com

1 Linux 1,122 53%
2 Mac OS X 348 16%
3 Windows XP 325 15%
4 Unknown 120 6%
5 Windows Vista 104 5%
6 Windows 7 55 3%
7 iPhone OSX 15 <1%
8 Windows 2000 10 <1%
9 Windows 2003 8 <1%
10 SunOS 3 <1%
11 Windows 98 2 <1%
12 Palm 2 <1%
13 Android 1 <1%

Click on the W3Counter logo to see the global report for August 2009