7 ms·

Linux now on 42% of consumer computing devices

99 points by dave1010uk 14y ago

mrshu 14y ago
42? Really? What was the question again?
jarin 14y ago
tl;dr: A lot of people have Android devices.
danieldk 14y ago
In the graph, there is a sudden change in 2005, where (I guess) mobile devices were added. What I don't get is how Apple jumps to 21%, given that the iPhone was not introduced before 2007. Edit: from the linked Seattle Times article: I asked Goldman Sachs about what happened in the 2004-2005 time frame -- as seen in the above chart -- that made Apple's vendor share jump, Microsoft's share plummet and the "other" category to go from zero to 29 percent. Goldman Sachs replied that it has to do with more mainstream adoption of non-PC consumer computing devices but declined to elaborate beyond that. Source: http://seattletimes.com/html/microsoftpri0/2019853243_goldman_sachs_microsoft_os_has_gone_from_more_than.html http://seattletimes.com/html/microsoftpri0/2019853243_goldma...
- micampe 14y ago
  That could have been the Intel transition but, although announced in 2005, the first Intel Macs were actually available in 2006.
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  They had to have started including iPods and other mp3 devices that year. It is obviously a change in data gathering, because nothing that exciting changed that year. Even when the iPhone came out, it was a show ramp that didn't really pick up until the 3G.
dan1234 14y ago
I thought OS X and iOS were derived from BSD. Is the graph supposed to be generic Unix/Unix like OSs or should Apple not be included in this? Or am I just wrong?
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Well , this is talking specifically about Linux so BSD would not count. AFAIK even though BSD looks sort of similar to Linux there is no actual shared code in the kernel and indeed many core libraries are different.
- rm999 14y ago
  The 42% is Android. If they wanted to make a stronger point they could sum up Apple and Android and claim 66% of mobile is on unix-like OS's.
- jeltz 14y ago
  OS X is based on NeXTSTEP which is in turn based on Mach. Mach is a micro kernel based on BSD.
  - vidarh 14y ago
    The version of Mach in OS X is not a microkernel. Only the last version of Mach was a microkernel, and OS X's kernel is based on an earlier version. And while the Mach project used a BSD userland, Mach is not really "BSD-based" other than in terms of interfaces to userland - it is based on Carnegie-Mellon's earlier "Accent" project.
    - jeltz 14y ago
      Thanks, should have written that in my comment. I did not intend to fool anyone into believing NeXTSTEP or OS X are micro kernels. And Wikipedia disagrees with you about Mach. It says Mach was the "logical successor to Carnegie Mellon's Accent kernel" and that Mach was based on BSD4.2. Though Wikipedia could obviously be wrong.
TallGuyShort 14y ago
Although it's technically running the Linux kernel, I personally would not consider it a free (libre) operating system as sold on most of those devices. I'm sure Linus is proud, but this seems like more of a win for Google than for the Linux community or free software in general.
- ivix 14y ago
  It's not "technically" running the Linux kernel, it IS running the linux kernel. It's also using most of the standard GNU tools - bash, etc. You can open a shell on a rooted android device and use it much like any other distribution. This is a huge win for Linux.
  - slurry 14y ago
    > It's also using most of the standard GNU tools - bash, etc. You can open a shell on a rooted android device and use it much like any other distribution. Android does use GNU gcc, but not glibc or GNU tools - it uses a custom libc called Bionic (BSD-licensed) and mksh + busybox for tools (also BSD-licensed). You don't even have to root it to play around with the shell (although you can't do much). Much to my dismay, the standard busybox does not even come with awk. :( > This is a huge win for Linux. Yup.
  - betterunix 14y ago
    "You can open a shell on a rooted android device and use it much like any other distribution" Assuming, of course, that you can actually root it. "This is a huge win for Linux." Is it? What was won, exactly? If we are not seeing a more vibrant free software ecosystem as a result, then we did not really win anything. The prevalence of app stores, the number of Android devices that are difficult to jailbreak or for which no jailbreaking tools are available yet, and the partitioning of "users" and "developers" in the Android ecosystem are not positive things for Linux or for GNU.
    - thefreeman 14y ago
      Are there android devices that are difficult to root? I have only ever used the Nexus line (closes to actual Android spec), but they have all been incredibly easy to root. I was under the impression they were actually built this way on purpose.
Hawkee 14y ago
The most striking statistic to me was Microsoft's drop from 97% to 20% over the past 12 years.
- keithpeter 14y ago
  Because the range of devices we decide to include has increased?
  - rayiner 14y ago
    I think a more appropriate charecterization is that the range of devices people use for daily computing has expanded.
    - kvb 14y ago
      If someone is using an Android phone as a glorified feature phone, does that still count as "computing"?
- rhplus 14y ago
  How many devices did the average consumer have in 2000 (a desktop PC, maybe a game console, maybe a laptop, a cable box) compared to now (an MP3 player, a smartphone, a laptop, a tablet, an e-reader, a game console, an internet TV box, in car computer, a wifi router, a backup NAS, etc). How many global consumers (think BRIC) are buying devices now that couldn't dream of it in the early 2000s? Microsoft's share of the pie has dropped, but the pie has exploded in size.
  - justincormack 14y ago
    Despite that MS has not had an explosion in sales, the outcome they were hoping for. They probably wouldn't mind a fall in market share so much if their sales had still quadrupled.
    - rhplus 14y ago
      You're right, their sales haven't quadrupled, but to be fair, across the company they haven't remained stagnant either. The best proxy I could find for sales was annual revenue, and that shows 3.2x growth for the 12 year period: FY 2000: $22.96 billion FY 2012: $73.72 billion Now, I'm sure financial geeks will pick holes in this simple comparison. And of course I realize that company revenue is heavily weighted by Windows and Office, and increasingly servers and tools, and much less so by direct consumer purchases. [2000] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2000/jul00/q00-4erpr.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2000/jul00/q00-4e... [2012] http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2012/jul12/07-19fy12Q4earningsPR.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2012/jul12/07-19fy...
martinced 14y ago
A lot of people have Android devices. And TV decoders running Linux. And routers running Linux. And the trend ain't stopping anytime soon: it's hard to compete with free and open. That's when you do really want to go back to the late nineties, on Usenet, where all the MS fanbois kept singing: "Nothing to see, move along, Unix is dying and Windows is going to conquer everything, including the server space". How farsighted these where uh!? And that's in not even 20 years. I can't imagine how the landscape shall look like in another twenty.
- xradionut 14y ago
  Usenet trolls then are the equivalent of the political blog spam today. In the nineties, Linux/OSS wasn't as mature/widespread and hardware for small devices sucked in performance and price. People wanted OSes and shit that just "worked". Installing and configuring "alternate" OSes in the '90s was painful even for experienced professionals and hobbyists. And the applications and user experience wasn't that great compared to what we have now. Now days I can install Linux on a mainstream laptop, restrict Windows to a VM and actually get shit done without any or that much pain.
  - brudgers 14y ago
    But the average computer user cannot, painlessly. Though Linux has gotten easier to install, the average computer user is relatively less proficient than they were a dozen years ago. Linux is not tailored for most people because of its fragmentation and the depth to which FOSS ideology drives its development. Supporting Linux is bothersome to the point that Red Hat run a lucrative business doing so.
    - vidarh 14y ago
      > Supporting Linux is bothersome to the point that Red Hat run a lucrative business doing so. I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this. Supporting Windows is bothersome, to the point that thousands of companies run lucrative businesses doing so. My personal experience is that supporting Linux in a business setting can be done with far fewer people than supporting Windows, and that seems to be a common experience.
brudgers 14y ago
My cars have computers which are not running Linux. Same for my microwave oven. A smartphone more closely approximates their level of end user programmability than it approximates that of an iMac. The article splits the world in a way which justifies the desired conclusion. It reminds me of the way the Amiga press used to hype even the most indirect cultural references as evidence of its impending success (yes, I know the scale was different, it's the behavior which is parallel).
- rayiner 14y ago
  Comparing a smart phone to a microwave oven is disingenuous. I'm HN-ing on my smart phone right now, which is something I used to schlep out of bed and plop myself in front of my PC to do.
  - brudgers 14y ago
    I can program my microwave to automatically heat my soup for 85 seconds at 80% power beginning at 2pm. End users would struggle to program their smartphones to navigate HN automatically at that time. Traditionally, programmability has been the consideration when determining what constitutes a general computing device. Browsing the web or reading email are not. What deserves analysis are the premises upon which the conclusion about Linux has been reached. The basis upon which the conclusion about Linux has been reached relies on a special definition. When an argument relies on changing the meaning of words, its honesty is suspect.
  - cameronh90 14y ago
    Maybe we should measure in terms of time spent using the device rather than just raw device count. I have a suspicion that if you did that, Windows would come off a lot stronger due to time spent at work, and even if you factored in microwaves, they wouldn't be a big slice of the pie.
- Codhisattva 14y ago
  Good point. Consumer computing is a much large category and QNX shouldn't be left out. But considering the source (Gartner) it's not surprise really.
lucian303 14y ago
Linux is NOT an OS and Linus did not create the OS. The OS is GNU the kernel is Linux. Thus you are comparing numbers for a kernel (Linux in Android OS versions) vs. numbers of OS's (Windows, OSX, iOS). This isn't a technicality either. Get it straight because as the article stands, it's unresearched garbage.
- vidarh 14y ago
  As much as the Linux kernel itself is not an OS, neither is it correct to generalize the way you do. There are tons of devices that run Linux that don't include GNU tools. I've personally ported Linux to devices that didn't run any GNU userland at all, yet that had a recognizable Linux/Unix-y interface. For many applications, the differences in kernel will in fact matter more in terms of portability than the userland will - I've written more than one application where I had to deal with differences between BSD vs. Linux kernels, for example, but where the userland didn't matter one iota.
- aleprok 14y ago
  GNU is not either the operation system as without Hurd, Linux or some other kernel you can not use the GNU tools. GNU/Linux is a collection of software which forms the operation system though this collection can contain even more software and with different collection it becomes different operation system which is why Android is Android and Ubuntu is Ubuntu, etc. But Linux will always be the key component of operation systems using Linux as kernel and we Linux fan boys will always be happy when Linux is used as a Kernel and will follow metrics about operation systems using it.
  - lucian303 14y ago
    And without GNU tools, Linux by itself is also useless without GNU tools (unless you can compile C by hand). GNU/Linux is the OS. Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. are distributions of this OS.
    - yxhuvud 14y ago
      I would be very surprised if it wasn't possible to compile the kernel using Clang. Hmm. Does anyone know if someone has tried to make a Linux dist based on the similar tools the BSD world have? I realize they probably would have to be modified quite heavily considering the architechture of BSD, but I've seen stranger things done in computing :)
recoiledsnake 14y ago
>For Microsoft the situation is not as good. The combined share of Redmond’s different operating systems fell from 97% in 2000 to an estimated 20% in 2012. Apple, with OS X and iOS, grabs a 24% share. So does this mean anti-monopoly restrictions must be lifted on Microsoft in the US and the EU? Why is Microsoft being unfairly targeted by, for example, being forced to include a browser choosing dialog in the EU while Apple gets a free pass for Safari inspite of having a higher marketshare and the lockdown of alternate browser engines and Javascript interpreters on iPhones and iPads?
- guard-of-terra 14y ago
  They might be. I don't see the point of forced browser choosing given that the browser market is very competitive right now.
  - bmuon 14y ago
    That's far from true in the iOS ecosystem.
  - azakai 14y ago
    > the browser market is very competitive right now. The important bit is "right now". It used to be competitive before IE6's stranglehold. And today, we can see a single implementation rapidly rising in marketshare, if that continues then we may have a non-competitive marketplace in the not-so-far future. In fact already right now WebKit has a dominant position in mobile, and many sites only work in WebKit. So even if the market is fairly healthy right now, we still need to be careful that doesn't change. The current trend hints that it will.
- vidarh 14y ago
  The anti-trust restrictions on Microsoft have always specifically targeted their behaviour in the desktop PC market.
  - intruderii 14y ago
    Isn't that distinction starting to become arbitrary? If trends continue, we're going to see a convergence between the mobile and desktop PC markets.
FranProgrammer 14y ago
I am very tired from the statements like this from time to time. I use Linux, I like it, but please stop to remember every day that Linux is the best and in a position of global leading.
rhplus 14y ago
How big did the overall pie grow in each of these years. They're claiming a massive drop for Microsoft, but wouldn't it be true to say that the total number of devices out there has grown hugely too. I know kids and teens with 2 or 3 "consumer devices" each and adults with 5 to 10. That certainly wasn't true in the 2000 - 2005 period.

99 points by dave1010uk 14y ago

mrshu 14y ago

42? Really? What was the question again?

jarin 14y ago

tl;dr: A lot of people have Android devices.

danieldk 14y ago

In the graph, there is a sudden change in 2005, where (I guess) mobile devices were added. What I don't get is how Apple jumps to 21%, given that the iPhone was not introduced before 2007. Edit: from the linked Seattle Times article: I asked Goldman Sachs about what happened in the 2004-2005 time frame -- as seen in the above chart -- that made Apple's vendor share jump, Microsoft's share plummet and the "other" category to go from zero to 29 percent. Goldman Sachs replied that it has to do with more mainstream adoption of non-PC consumer computing devices but declined to elaborate beyond that. Source: http://seattletimes.com/html/microsoftpri0/2019853243_goldman_sachs_microsoft_os_has_gone_from_more_than.html http://seattletimes.com/html/microsoftpri0/2019853243_goldma...

micampe 14y ago
That could have been the Intel transition but, although announced in 2005, the first Intel Macs were actually available in 2006.
SoftwareMaven 14y ago
They had to have started including iPods and other mp3 devices that year. It is obviously a change in data gathering, because nothing that exciting changed that year. Even when the iPhone came out, it was a show ramp that didn't really pick up until the 3G.

dan1234 14y ago

I thought OS X and iOS were derived from BSD. Is the graph supposed to be generic Unix/Unix like OSs or should Apple not be included in this? Or am I just wrong?

jiggy2011 14y ago
Well , this is talking specifically about Linux so BSD would not count. AFAIK even though BSD looks sort of similar to Linux there is no actual shared code in the kernel and indeed many core libraries are different.
rm999 14y ago
The 42% is Android. If they wanted to make a stronger point they could sum up Apple and Android and claim 66% of mobile is on unix-like OS's.
jeltz 14y ago
OS X is based on NeXTSTEP which is in turn based on Mach. Mach is a micro kernel based on BSD.
- vidarh 14y ago
  The version of Mach in OS X is not a microkernel. Only the last version of Mach was a microkernel, and OS X's kernel is based on an earlier version. And while the Mach project used a BSD userland, Mach is not really "BSD-based" other than in terms of interfaces to userland - it is based on Carnegie-Mellon's earlier "Accent" project.
  - jeltz 14y ago
    Thanks, should have written that in my comment. I did not intend to fool anyone into believing NeXTSTEP or OS X are micro kernels. And Wikipedia disagrees with you about Mach. It says Mach was the "logical successor to Carnegie Mellon's Accent kernel" and that Mach was based on BSD4.2. Though Wikipedia could obviously be wrong.

TallGuyShort 14y ago

Although it's technically running the Linux kernel, I personally would not consider it a free (libre) operating system as sold on most of those devices. I'm sure Linus is proud, but this seems like more of a win for Google than for the Linux community or free software in general.

ivix 14y ago
It's not "technically" running the Linux kernel, it IS running the linux kernel. It's also using most of the standard GNU tools - bash, etc. You can open a shell on a rooted android device and use it much like any other distribution. This is a huge win for Linux.
- slurry 14y ago
  > It's also using most of the standard GNU tools - bash, etc. You can open a shell on a rooted android device and use it much like any other distribution. Android does use GNU gcc, but not glibc or GNU tools - it uses a custom libc called Bionic (BSD-licensed) and mksh + busybox for tools (also BSD-licensed). You don't even have to root it to play around with the shell (although you can't do much). Much to my dismay, the standard busybox does not even come with awk. :( > This is a huge win for Linux. Yup.
- betterunix 14y ago
  "You can open a shell on a rooted android device and use it much like any other distribution" Assuming, of course, that you can actually root it. "This is a huge win for Linux." Is it? What was won, exactly? If we are not seeing a more vibrant free software ecosystem as a result, then we did not really win anything. The prevalence of app stores, the number of Android devices that are difficult to jailbreak or for which no jailbreaking tools are available yet, and the partitioning of "users" and "developers" in the Android ecosystem are not positive things for Linux or for GNU.
  - thefreeman 14y ago
    Are there android devices that are difficult to root? I have only ever used the Nexus line (closes to actual Android spec), but they have all been incredibly easy to root. I was under the impression they were actually built this way on purpose.

Hawkee 14y ago

The most striking statistic to me was Microsoft's drop from 97% to 20% over the past 12 years.

keithpeter 14y ago
Because the range of devices we decide to include has increased?
- rayiner 14y ago
  I think a more appropriate charecterization is that the range of devices people use for daily computing has expanded.
  - kvb 14y ago
    If someone is using an Android phone as a glorified feature phone, does that still count as "computing"?
rhplus 14y ago
How many devices did the average consumer have in 2000 (a desktop PC, maybe a game console, maybe a laptop, a cable box) compared to now (an MP3 player, a smartphone, a laptop, a tablet, an e-reader, a game console, an internet TV box, in car computer, a wifi router, a backup NAS, etc). How many global consumers (think BRIC) are buying devices now that couldn't dream of it in the early 2000s? Microsoft's share of the pie has dropped, but the pie has exploded in size.
- justincormack 14y ago
  Despite that MS has not had an explosion in sales, the outcome they were hoping for. They probably wouldn't mind a fall in market share so much if their sales had still quadrupled.
  - rhplus 14y ago
    You're right, their sales haven't quadrupled, but to be fair, across the company they haven't remained stagnant either. The best proxy I could find for sales was annual revenue, and that shows 3.2x growth for the 12 year period: FY 2000: $22.96 billion FY 2012: $73.72 billion Now, I'm sure financial geeks will pick holes in this simple comparison. And of course I realize that company revenue is heavily weighted by Windows and Office, and increasingly servers and tools, and much less so by direct consumer purchases. [2000] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2000/jul00/q00-4erpr.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2000/jul00/q00-4e... [2012] http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2012/jul12/07-19fy12Q4earningsPR.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2012/jul12/07-19fy...

martinced 14y ago

A lot of people have Android devices. And TV decoders running Linux. And routers running Linux. And the trend ain't stopping anytime soon: it's hard to compete with free and open. That's when you do really want to go back to the late nineties, on Usenet, where all the MS fanbois kept singing: "Nothing to see, move along, Unix is dying and Windows is going to conquer everything, including the server space". How farsighted these where uh!? And that's in not even 20 years. I can't imagine how the landscape shall look like in another twenty.

xradionut 14y ago
Usenet trolls then are the equivalent of the political blog spam today. In the nineties, Linux/OSS wasn't as mature/widespread and hardware for small devices sucked in performance and price. People wanted OSes and shit that just "worked". Installing and configuring "alternate" OSes in the '90s was painful even for experienced professionals and hobbyists. And the applications and user experience wasn't that great compared to what we have now. Now days I can install Linux on a mainstream laptop, restrict Windows to a VM and actually get shit done without any or that much pain.
- brudgers 14y ago
  But the average computer user cannot, painlessly. Though Linux has gotten easier to install, the average computer user is relatively less proficient than they were a dozen years ago. Linux is not tailored for most people because of its fragmentation and the depth to which FOSS ideology drives its development. Supporting Linux is bothersome to the point that Red Hat run a lucrative business doing so.
  - vidarh 14y ago
    > Supporting Linux is bothersome to the point that Red Hat run a lucrative business doing so. I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this. Supporting Windows is bothersome, to the point that thousands of companies run lucrative businesses doing so. My personal experience is that supporting Linux in a business setting can be done with far fewer people than supporting Windows, and that seems to be a common experience.

brudgers 14y ago

My cars have computers which are not running Linux. Same for my microwave oven. A smartphone more closely approximates their level of end user programmability than it approximates that of an iMac. The article splits the world in a way which justifies the desired conclusion. It reminds me of the way the Amiga press used to hype even the most indirect cultural references as evidence of its impending success (yes, I know the scale was different, it's the behavior which is parallel).

rayiner 14y ago
Comparing a smart phone to a microwave oven is disingenuous. I'm HN-ing on my smart phone right now, which is something I used to schlep out of bed and plop myself in front of my PC to do.
- brudgers 14y ago
  I can program my microwave to automatically heat my soup for 85 seconds at 80% power beginning at 2pm. End users would struggle to program their smartphones to navigate HN automatically at that time. Traditionally, programmability has been the consideration when determining what constitutes a general computing device. Browsing the web or reading email are not. What deserves analysis are the premises upon which the conclusion about Linux has been reached. The basis upon which the conclusion about Linux has been reached relies on a special definition. When an argument relies on changing the meaning of words, its honesty is suspect.
- cameronh90 14y ago
  Maybe we should measure in terms of time spent using the device rather than just raw device count. I have a suspicion that if you did that, Windows would come off a lot stronger due to time spent at work, and even if you factored in microwaves, they wouldn't be a big slice of the pie.
Codhisattva 14y ago
Good point. Consumer computing is a much large category and QNX shouldn't be left out. But considering the source (Gartner) it's not surprise really.

lucian303 14y ago

Linux is NOT an OS and Linus did not create the OS. The OS is GNU the kernel is Linux. Thus you are comparing numbers for a kernel (Linux in Android OS versions) vs. numbers of OS's (Windows, OSX, iOS). This isn't a technicality either. Get it straight because as the article stands, it's unresearched garbage.

vidarh 14y ago
As much as the Linux kernel itself is not an OS, neither is it correct to generalize the way you do. There are tons of devices that run Linux that don't include GNU tools. I've personally ported Linux to devices that didn't run any GNU userland at all, yet that had a recognizable Linux/Unix-y interface. For many applications, the differences in kernel will in fact matter more in terms of portability than the userland will - I've written more than one application where I had to deal with differences between BSD vs. Linux kernels, for example, but where the userland didn't matter one iota.
aleprok 14y ago
GNU is not either the operation system as without Hurd, Linux or some other kernel you can not use the GNU tools. GNU/Linux is a collection of software which forms the operation system though this collection can contain even more software and with different collection it becomes different operation system which is why Android is Android and Ubuntu is Ubuntu, etc. But Linux will always be the key component of operation systems using Linux as kernel and we Linux fan boys will always be happy when Linux is used as a Kernel and will follow metrics about operation systems using it.
- lucian303 14y ago
  And without GNU tools, Linux by itself is also useless without GNU tools (unless you can compile C by hand). GNU/Linux is the OS. Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. are distributions of this OS.
  - yxhuvud 14y ago
    I would be very surprised if it wasn't possible to compile the kernel using Clang. Hmm. Does anyone know if someone has tried to make a Linux dist based on the similar tools the BSD world have? I realize they probably would have to be modified quite heavily considering the architechture of BSD, but I've seen stranger things done in computing :)

recoiledsnake 14y ago

>For Microsoft the situation is not as good. The combined share of Redmond’s different operating systems fell from 97% in 2000 to an estimated 20% in 2012. Apple, with OS X and iOS, grabs a 24% share. So does this mean anti-monopoly restrictions must be lifted on Microsoft in the US and the EU? Why is Microsoft being unfairly targeted by, for example, being forced to include a browser choosing dialog in the EU while Apple gets a free pass for Safari inspite of having a higher marketshare and the lockdown of alternate browser engines and Javascript interpreters on iPhones and iPads?

guard-of-terra 14y ago
They might be. I don't see the point of forced browser choosing given that the browser market is very competitive right now.
- bmuon 14y ago
  That's far from true in the iOS ecosystem.
- azakai 14y ago
  > the browser market is very competitive right now. The important bit is "right now". It used to be competitive before IE6's stranglehold. And today, we can see a single implementation rapidly rising in marketshare, if that continues then we may have a non-competitive marketplace in the not-so-far future. In fact already right now WebKit has a dominant position in mobile, and many sites only work in WebKit. So even if the market is fairly healthy right now, we still need to be careful that doesn't change. The current trend hints that it will.
vidarh 14y ago
The anti-trust restrictions on Microsoft have always specifically targeted their behaviour in the desktop PC market.
- intruderii 14y ago
  Isn't that distinction starting to become arbitrary? If trends continue, we're going to see a convergence between the mobile and desktop PC markets.

FranProgrammer 14y ago

I am very tired from the statements like this from time to time. I use Linux, I like it, but please stop to remember every day that Linux is the best and in a position of global leading.

rhplus 14y ago

How big did the overall pie grow in each of these years. They're claiming a massive drop for Microsoft, but wouldn't it be true to say that the total number of devices out there has grown hugely too. I know kids and teens with 2 or 3 "consumer devices" each and adults with 5 to 10. That certainly wasn't true in the 2000 - 2005 period.