Linux Clients at 1-2 Percent Market Share
Two statistics for April show that Linux clients have grown to a market share of one to two percent. Both see Linux as gradually gaining ground,
while Microsoft still maintains its quasi monopoly.
The W3Counter statistics website showed for April that 2.16% of websites sampled ran Linux as their operating system. The service provides free traffic analysis of global websites. The results showed that the Linux share was about half of that for Mac OS X, which stood at 5.31%.
The Microsoft platforms, when added together, came to about 89% of the market share. But the market leader can't rest too self-assured. At 70% of the market, the older Windows XP is still miles ahead of the supposedly successful newer Vista at 15%. The statistics also show that Linux pulled ahead of Windows 2000, 2003, 98 and ME.
As statistics go, there are the usual divergences. The W3Counter analysis was based on data from April 30 and a little over 64 thousand visits to about 23 thousand websites, with the last 25 thousand page views analyzed to identify unique visits. Other statistics from Hitslink.com from the beginning of May show Linux clients at just over one percent of market share. The survey was based on 164 million visits over April. Mac OS X here stood at 9.7%, while Microsoft was at almost 88%.
The differences in statistics are significant and the numbers debatable, but the results show at least two things. First, Linux is slowly yet continuously growing in market share. Secondly, Microsoft still holds onto its quasi monopoly of almost 90% of the market.
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