Linux and Firefox market share – the reality
You may have seen that, according to NetApps Linux is used by 1% (or in words – one percent) of online users. There’s one thing to note, and that is the fact that not all Linux users are using it to surf, and that some are changing their user agent strings to mimic IE on Windows. The other, probably more important thing is that NetApps base their studies mostly on surfers from US of A.
As you can see in the chart above, the blue is 14%, red 33.5% and the yellow is the staggering 52.5%. This means that blue represents 14% of all computer users. And in this case it is not only 14% of the surfers, but of all computer users in the world. In the chart below, you can see that 14% separated from the red and blue parts, which represent 100 – 14 = 86% of the whole e-world’s population.
Trends
Obviously, the current statistics are not as important as the trends. In the following few charts, you can see the trends over the past few years. Naturally the data for the current year had to be extrapolated since 2009 is not yet over.
You can see that, although the blue had the largest share in 2006 with 1250 tested users (which was almost 70%), and the yellow had only 128 users, the yellow grew exponentially, and the blue grew insignificantly. Yellow had 512 in 2007, 1024 in 2008, and 2048 is predicted for 2009.
You can see the percentage chart during the past few years, which I think speaks for itself.
Yes, but which is which?
Comment by Irina — 13 May 2009 @ 20:47
I know this is not April 1st and that I shouldn’t post things like this, but I’ve got fed up with these ‘market share’ articles.
So, I’ve decided to write one myself that will be utterly useless, just as the rest of them are.
Comment by Ivan Čukić — 13 May 2009 @ 20:50
LOL!
For what it’s worth my blog and website get more Firefox visitors than any single version of IE, and only slightly less Firefox than all versions of IE combined. Should do a pie chart of my own sometime.
Comment by Irina — 13 May 2009 @ 21:02
GO, YELLOW, GO!!!
Comment by cIgnatov — 13 May 2009 @ 21:28
I like the spoof. If there is nothing interesting except a few numbers journalists should just refrain from writing the contrived rest.
This year will be the year of yellow submarines!
Comment by Andreas — 13 May 2009 @ 22:02
Chicken chicken? Chicken chicken chick chicken!
Comment by Chicken — 13 May 2009 @ 22:13
There’s 5 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.
Comment by Byron — 13 May 2009 @ 22:40
Oh boy. I read it three times.
Comment by Haisen — 13 May 2009 @ 23:25
Fighting idiocy with idiocy. Very nice.
Comment by Haisen — 13 May 2009 @ 23:30
I loved it. I read it twice since I couldn’t find out what it is what you actually wanted to say. And I LOLed so hard, when I read that this is a fake.
As I said, I love it
Comment by Burke — 13 May 2009 @ 23:46
Hahaha nice one, succeeded in fooling me completely for about 5 minutes.
Comment by Dion Moult — 14 May 2009 @ 01:19
blue linux, red mac, yellow windows… oh wait!
Comment by david.cs — 14 May 2009 @ 04:43
This was clever. I readed it one time and then in the end I was thinkin how you forget to add the firefox/linux info there, but the calculations showed to be imagined.
But I must say that I do not trust at all those marketshare studied. I see more and more Linux OS conquering the world on these days than 10 years ago. Even then it was possible to see them on desktops but now, you can see more easily Mandriva, Linpus, Xandros, OpenSuse and even Ubuntu (even it is less than others).
It is just great that one OS can bring so much competition to markets that people actually finds out what distribution gives them such software system what includes features and applications what they need.
The 1% share is a joke. I would place my bet to 5-10% share and Windows only to 70-80% share.
When looking other statics where the one group has 10% share, it is so minimal to see, because the bigger 90% share is always so easy to pick on the view, so it is easy to think that everyone is using the 90% share product.
I think we need to thank Linus Torvalds about ever starting the Linux OS, RMS to write GNU licenses and development tools so we can write free software. And we need to thank Netscape by releasing Netscape browser under GPL, so we got Firefox and Mozilla.
Now we have so much changes to make world better place with GNU tools and license. We all can actually change the world like KDE or Gnome is doing.
Why we need to care about marketshares? 10 years ago it was almost painfull to get Linux work with different hardware. It was almost endless usenet browsing to find out compatible hardware what to buy. Now, the Linux has spread so wide OS that device makers are taking notice to it and building compatible devices etc. No company would do that for 1% marketshare.
We can even see that 10% marketshare ain’t always enough for companies to start supporting someone.
Example the lefthanded people, how many left hand mouses you can actually find when comparing the share of right handed? Almost all are right handed mouses, few only are lefthanded, even that many OEM manufactures includes the mouse what is for both handes.
10% of users are left handed and still, it is minority on mouse desiging. It would almost be forced to every manufacturer to design mouses to both hands, but that is not the case.
So why to make applications, devices for Linux if it has only 1% share on OS markets?
1% on big amount of computers, means that there are tens of millions users out there, but not everyone have a need to drawn tablet, superity 3D cards (whera are the games?), graphical applications etc. The companies just understand that Linux is more widespread OS than what market share statics show.
And if we would calculate all world computers OS’s, the Linux would have bigger share on the statics view as well. Because they don’t usually calculate there other areas as well. Servers (Linux is dominant), Embedded systems (Linux is dominant), DVD players (Linux has great share), WLAN routers (Linux is dominant) and even now smartphones has get more attention, thans to Android platform (Android use Linux as it’s OS).
The share is just too big to be said to be only 1%.
Mayby FLOSS and especially Linux are making so big threat to old companies, that they need to push down the share any way as possible, like only basing statics to web-browsers?
Comment by Tommy — 14 May 2009 @ 11:49
@All
If you feel that I’ve tricked you to lose your valuable time reading this, I apologize. But, the rest of the articles you’ve spent your time reading on this topic before were the same waste.
This one was at least funny, at least for majority (~68%
) of readers that decided to comment on it (most of them via IRC).
@Tommy
Thanks for a *very* detailed answer.
I agree with you. All statistics are useless and too easy to manipulate. That is one of the main reasons I wrote this post.
For example, I could claim that 80% of all computers have only Linux installed on them. And then, to write in the small-print that the data is based on computers in my family. Or not to write the population which the statistics are based on at all.
As for the /real/ share, I must say that I don’t care. There are enough users so that the Libre development continues, and there are even enough users of Lancelot for me to feel appreciated. And that’s all that counts.
Comment by Ivan Čukić — 14 May 2009 @ 12:06
@Tommy
p.s. The numbers are not “imagined” – the blue really has 14% of the whole pie in the first graph
Comment by Ivan Čukić — 14 May 2009 @ 12:13
A lot of people still miss the VERY important point that Microsoft is essentially funding Net Applications as one of its largest customers.
Comment by Roy Schestowitz — 14 May 2009 @ 15:35
3D-charts suck.
Comment by statistics guy — 14 May 2009 @ 15:38
I think almost everybody these days use Linux – for example, in the company I worked few months ago everybody used it!
and I’m sure that everyone here use it as well 
Comment by Petra — 14 May 2009 @ 20:13
- The maximum temperature today was 15ᵒC
– Oh, OK
- The average maximum temperature last week was 17ᵒC
– What!? Do I look like an idiot who believes in statistics!?
Comment by Ari Torhamo — 16 May 2009 @ 03:51