Apples v Apples at Robert Pogson

The recent press release from IDC, “U.S. Growth Slips, But Worldwide PC Shipments Remain Healthy, According to IDC”, contains some interesting data we can combine with web stats to gain further insight into GNU/Linux adoption.

The US PC market is not bad with 3.5% growth Q1-2008/Q1-2007. The US is a mature market, but there is no “pop” for the pent-up demand for a new OS from M$. Apple gets 6% of this market with 25% growth and is in fourth place, after Acer and before Toshiba.
The global PC market is hot with 14.6% growth. This is a largely expanding market with many newcomers becoming consumers in China, India, Russia and South America. Here, Apple is a no show, not in the top five, presumably with fewer sales than Toshiba at 4.4%.

Combining this with Apple’s 10Q (2.289 million units sold) and knowing that MacOS is only allowed to run on Macs, we can tell pretty surely that a little more than 3% of PCs are Macs running MacOS. Web stats show that other OS has dropped below 90%, so that leaves more than 6% for GNU/Linux. QED

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.