Thailand is rapidly acquiring IT of all kinds. They have a website for their own web stats, truehits.net.
Sure, it’s small, but look at the rate of growth, ~200% per annum. I like that. It’s much better for GNU/Linux than that other OS with a decline of 12% per annum. I like that too. Unfortunately, Apple has salesmen there and they are selling a ton of ithingies and Macs. Still about 5% of the change is going to GNU/Linux so there has been a dramatic shift in purchasing habits.
In 2003, M$ cut the price of their licences dramatically for Thailand, staving off competition. In 2009, M$ cut a deal to promote their stuff in 2000 schools. Whatever, their share is slipping.
17466
12763
206
3
2
23909 
11862 
11714 
4635 
4261 
1642 
198 
14 
2 
0 
0 
0 
Indeed, a phenomenal growth rate. From 0.08 percent to 0.33 percent in 9 years and 8 months! And your growth rate won’t help you one bit, as Linux has a natural ceiling of about 1–2 percent.
Have you looked if the stats are “biased”?
Now excuse me while I continue to LMAO.
Chris Weig wrote, “Linux has a natural ceiling of about 1–2 percent.”
You meant “unnatural” as in dictated by M$, of course. Fortunately M$ is losing the ability to dictate any longer. About 8% of money spent in Thailand on software is spent on GNU/Linux. That’s over 2% by the way.
That is a lot less then the global average, even if it is the “bogus” 1%. …and what does it tell us about the market share worldwide?
MK wrote, “That is a lot less then the global average, even if it is the “bogus” 1%. …and what does it tell us about the market share worldwide?”
Thailand is part of the “emerging” market. The emerging market is still smaller than the “established” markets like North America/Europe, but it has way more people and is growing much faster, so information about conditions in Thailand may be important leading indicators of the future global situation. The main difference after huge numbers of potential consumers is that folks who have not owned a PC before are not locked in. Many more will use a smart thingy as their main PC. Many more will accept GNU/Linux particularly if it’s offered at lower price. When the established markets were locked in only wealthy could afford a PC and GNU/Linux was not well-enough developed to compete. The situation in emerging markets now is quite different. GNU/Linux is a valid option and cheaper. Probably in the next two or three years more people will acquire their first personal computer than all the PCs ever sold in established markets. Now we have about 1.3billion people with x86 PCs and 700million with smart thingies. In five years we could have 4billion people with x86, ARM, MIPS and Loongson processors and the share of GNU/Linux may well exceed that of MacOS and that other OS combined. The limiting factor on uptake of GNU/Linux and Android/Linux will not be retail shelf-space but manufacturing capacity which can double or redouble in a year as demand ramps up. At the moment Wintel is stagnating with production capacity idling and Wintel is trying to raise prices… That just will not work in emerging markets. Meanwhile. ARM production is maxed out. OEMs will switch x86 production to GNU/Linux to lower prices and to compete in emerging markets. Established markets can ignore these changes at the risk of being left behind.
OEMs are locked in to Wintel pretty well but they are willing to try GNU/Linux in emerging markets because they have nothing to lose there and everything to gain by increasing their margins.