Category: OS

PCs running Windows XP Media Center OS now dominate the market, accounting for 60% of desktops sold in US retail, Current Analysis says.

According to IDC, China’s Linux market revenue reached $11.8 mln in 2005, up 27.1% over 2004. 2005 saw a steady growth in the China Linux market, brought about mainly by the huge volume of government procurements and large-scale SCO Unix replacement by major banks and industrial projects such as Telecommunication and Internet cafes. IDC forecasts China’s Linux market will grow at a CAGR of 34.0% from 2006 to 2010, and reach $51.1 mln by 2010.

40% of IT managers surveyed by Gartner said their data centers comprised mainframes running Unix, Linux and Windows. 14% said they had a mainframe with just Unix and Windows, 4% were running Windows on a mainframe, and just 1% had a mainframe running Unix only. 24% said they were running with Unix, Linux and Windows but without a mainframe. 10% of the total group questioned were running Unix and Windows but not running any mainframe systems, 3% were using Windows and Linux in a mainframe-free environment, and only 4% were running Windows without mainframe hardware.

Symbian had 51% market share of the mobile OS market at the end of 2005, down from 56% in 2004, The Diffusion Group says. Linux came in second at 23%, which was double its 2004 share of 11.3%. Microsoft came in third upping its 2004 market share of 12.6% to 17%. By 2010, Windows will hold the lead at a projected 29%, trailed by Linux at 26% and Symbian at 22%.

Embedded Linux is on the path to become a $100 million market in 2005, according to Venture Development Corp.

Q2 2005 shipments of Symbian OS phones tripled YTY to reach 7.8 mln (in Q2 2004 only 2.6 mln). Total shipments of Symbian OS phones for the first half of the 2005 totalled 14.5 mln (in H1 2004 only 5.0 mln units), YTY increase of 191%. More Symbian OS phones shipped in H1 2005 than in the whole of 2004. Symbian OS worldwide installed base reaches more than 39 million phones. 54 separate Symbian OS phone models were shipped worldwide from seven licensees (H1 2004 – 23 phone models, 6 licensees). 18 new Symbian OS phone models commenced shipping in first half from Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Nokia and Panasonic. 16 phones of the 54 Symbian OS phones shipping are designed for 3G W-CDMA networks deployed in Europe and in Japan.

According to IDC, Linux server operating environment (SOE) revenues are forecast to account for 6.1% of the entire SOE market in China in 2005. IDC forecasts Linux SOE revenue in China will reach $19.9 mln in 2005 and grow to $117.6 mln by 2009, displaying a robust five-year (2005-2009) compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 64%. In China, government-led initiatives encouraging the adoption of open source software have spurred on intense competition between various factions of the community. According to IDC China, revenues for the locally-sold Linux SOE market in the first half of 2005 are estimated to approach $2.9 mln. The locally-sold market includes Linux SOEs acquired through local channels and OEMs as well as direct from Linux SOE vendors, but does not include Linux SOEs acquired through global OEMs.

Windows commands 65-70% of the corporate server operating system market, while the Linux share stands at 15-20%. Currently, Linux server shipments represent the fastest-growing segment of the market, Yankee Group says.

1% of enterprise customers run Linux desktops, Gartner says. By 2008 the number will reach 3.2%.

Canalys Research presented data on operating system market shares in smart device market. Before Canalys estimated global smart device shipments in Q2 2005.

Worldwide smart mobile device market in Q2 2005
Operating system	Q2 2005		Q2 2004		YTY growth
	Shipments	Share	Shipments	Share
Symbian	7,648,920	62.8%	2,429,930	41.0%	214.8%
Microsoft	1,931,630	15.9%	1,360,220	22.9%	42.0%
PalmSource	1,157,720	9.5%	1,335,810	22.5%	-13.3%
Others	1,447,330	11.9%	807,370	13.6%	79.3%
Total	12,185,600	100.0%	5,933,330	100.0%	105.4%
Source: Canalys Research

According to IHL Consulting Group, Linux deployments in retail increased 34% in 2004 over 2003. Driven by new market entrants and the rising popularity of Linux, the average cost of a point of sale system has fallen dramatically over the past two years, from more than $4,000 in 2002 to under $1,000 in 2004.

According to IDC, Symbian dominates the converged mobile device operating system market with a 55.9% share in 2004. Symbian’s share of this market is expected to grow to nearly 60% in 2009. Microsoft Windows Mobile platforms had 12.7% of the market in 2004, with continued growth to 17.3% of the market in 2009. Linux had an 11.3% share in 2004 and is expected to capture nearly 17% of the market in 2009.

Embedded Linux powered 13.7% of smartphones shipped worldwide in Q1 2005, up 412% from 3.4% in Q1 2004, according to Gartner. Windows Mobile smaprtphone shipments also grew, rising 50% from 2.9% in Q1 2004 to 4.5% in Q1 2005.

21% of Japanese companies are currently using open source operating systems, while 22% either have plans to deploy, or are considering plans to deploy them, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan reported. 33% of US companies have adopted open-source OSs. As far as the reasons for switching to open source, 66% said open-source OSs have low initial costs, while 47.8% said the software has low operating costs.

IDC Australia surveyed resellers, small and medium businesses and consumers in regards to their plans on Linux operating system. 1.7% of consumer said they used Linux on notebooks, 1.1% of small and medium businesses plan to ask for Linux on their next PC purchases, and resellers claim Linux share in white box shipments is roughly 1.1%.

IDC Canada said Canadian server market for Linux grew more than 36% in 2003-2004, beating the Windows server market’s growth of about 27% for the same timespan.

A study of corporate operating system usage by AssetMetrix shows that Windows XP use surged to 38% by Q1 2005, up from 6.6% in Q3 2003. However, the popularity of Windows 2000 has remained high, with 48% of business PCs running it in Q1 2005, down 4% from Q3 2003. Windows 95 and Windows 98 were reduced from a collective 28% to less than 5%. Windows NT popularity was reduced from 13.5% to about 10%. Windows XP became the most popular operating system for companies with fewer than 250 PCs.

Linux use was reported in 53% of the 500 North American companies surveyed by SG Cowen & Co, TechWeb reports. 7% of the respondents planned to adopt Linux, which was the “most modest” level the company had seen in its survey. The combined use or planned adoption of Linux at 60% was the lowest level since September 2003, when the number was 56%, including 44% having adopted Linux and 12% planning to use the open-source operating system. There was a 10% drop from September 2004, when Cowen reported 56% of companies having adopted Linux and 14% planning to deploy the operating system. 52% of companies planned to increase workloads on Windows servers, versus 7% planning a reduction. For Linux, those numbers were 50% and 10%, respectively.

Linux server revenue exceeded $1.2 bln in Q1 2005 as Linux server revenues showed 35.2% growth, IDC says. Worldwide investment in Linux servers for both technical and commercial workloads remains strong as Linux servers continue to expand their presence in data centers around the world. HP maintained its #1 spot in the Linux server market, with 27.7% market share in terms of revenue, while IBM was second with 19.8%.

Patching a Windows client system costs 14% less than patching a comparable open-source client machine, Wipro study of 90 companies said. The total for patching a Windows database server is 33% less than for its Linux counterpart.

AssetMetrix Research Labs released the results of a survey of 251 North American companies, measuring the adoption of Windows XP Service Pack 2. Only 7% of companies had actively embraced Windows XP Service Pack 2, according to the New York Times.

Info-Tech Research Group surveyed 1,400 IT executives of mid-size companies (less than $1 bln in revenues) regarding their plans on Linux. 27% of respondents currently have Linux installed. Almost half of respondents said they had “no interest” in Linux. Of the companies where Linux is not already installed, 48% have no interest and an additional 15% are not sure.

88% of companies interviews by Yankee Group say that quality, performance and reliability of Windows is just as good or better than in Linux. On a scale of 1 to 10, companies rated Microsoft’s security at 7.6, double the rating in a similar survey conducted in 2004. Linux’s rating was mostly the same at 8.3.

NetCraft points out Fedora’s winning run as far as leading distribution for the Web hosting market. The company surveyed the number of active sites in September 2004 and March 2005, noticing 122.4% growth for the RedHat-sponsored Linux operating system. Surprisingly at the same time, RedHat’s flagship OS product, RedHat Enterprise Linux, slipped by 1.2%.

Distribution	Active sites Sep 2004	Active sites Mar 2005	Growth Rate
RedHat	1630382	1610427	-1.2%
Debian	693941	791086	14.0%
Cobalt	619960	516963	-16.6%
SuSE	399031	442908	11.0%
Fedora	182421	405682	122.4%
Mandrake	62972	73459	16.7%
Gentoo	43525	63160	45.1%

Australian smart handheld market grew strongly in Q4 2004, according to IDC. Converged devices accounted for 68.6% of the smart handheld market, achieving 42.7% growth from Q3 2004, while the pen-based device market grew 28.8%. Symbian continued to be the most popular OS with 44.2% of the market. This was followed by Microsoft with 36.1% and Palm with 10.6%. The top five vendors were Nokia with 30.7%, HP with 17.4%, PalmOne 10.6%, O2 with 8.9%, and Motorola with 8.5%.