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HP vs. Dell: Showdown at the Windows 7 upgrade corral
Here's a tale of two PC titans: HP and Dell. One executes well every quarter. The other doesn't. Both see big PC upgrade cycles ahead. Both are looking to ride... Continued »
Category: Linux
October 27th, 2009
Yes, Ubuntu can absolutely be the default Windows alternative
And I don’t just mean for geeks. I mean a real, viable alternative to Windows for many users despite the apparent quality of both Windows 7 and Server 2008.
About a year and a half ago, ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes asked, “Is Ubuntu becoming the generic Linux distro?” and concluded that “the evolution of Ubuntu into the generic Linux distro isn’t a bad thing”. Fair enough, but Canonical’s Mark Shuttleworth took this idea a bit farther during a press conference call yesterday:
“We’ve already done a lot of work in developer ecosystem and we’re now increasingly interested in the non-developer consumer ecosystem, so that’s what all the OEM work is about,” Shuttleworth said, declaring that his focus was on “making sure that Ubuntu gets pre-installed and Ubuntu is available from Dell.com and others and making sure that Ubuntu is the default alternative to Windows.”
September 24th, 2009
Red Hat CEO vs. Torvalds: More Linux features don't equate to bloat
Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst disagreed with Linus Torvalds’ contention that Linux has become bloated. Whitehurst said that Linux is growing and becoming more full-featured. The bloat will come when features are added that no one wants.
Whitehurst addressed the Torvalds comments Wednesday on the company’s second quarter earnings conference call.
Also see: Torvalds calls Linux “bloated” and “scary.” Is he right? · Does it matter that “Linux is bloated”?
Here’s the key question from Brent Williams, an analyst at Benchmark, and Whitehurst’s answer.
Williams: I saw an interview with [Linus Torvalds] the other day and he was suggesting the idea that in some respects, the core Linux kernel is getting a little bit bloated and that there’s just so much stuff going in there and I think of course Linus speaks his mind at any given moment and doesn’t bother himself with consistency from day to day in his thoughts, but is this reflective of any maturity in the evolution of the kernel technologically? Is this suggesting maybe that a lot more focus is going to surrounding capabilities? I mean, is this indicative of a change in the focus of the kernel development community and can we look at any sort of hints there about where Linux might evolve and how that might end up helping Linux attack new markets, or anything like that?
Whitehurst: I guess my simple answer to that is as Linux has continued to grow and its applicability continues to expand, there’s just more feature functionality that people are looking for to be built into the operating system. I have not had a conversation with him about the comment. I don’t think of that as bloat. Certainly bloat is when you start adding feature functionalities that people don’t want, and certainly the nature of Linux where users are the key contributors, I do think Linux is growing but I think it is much more indicative of the fact that its’ continued added features that people do want and the key differentiator is it can continue to do that in a very modular way, so I actually look at the growth as much more of a reflection that it continues to add features that people do want, and that’s a good thing.
So who’s right here? Whitehurst has a point. Won’t every operating system have virtualization capabilities layered in? Isn’t it the normal course of business to add features?
However, Torvalds may be onto something too. He may be early with his bloat warning, but at some point Linux will have more features than people actually want. Bloated operating systems are like a lot of other things: It’s hard to find the tipping point, but you know bloat when you see it.
Loading ...September 24th, 2009
Red Hat gains operating system share at Sun's expense
Red Hat’s fiscal second quarter results were solid across the board as the company continues to poach operating system market share even though server sales are weak.
Simply put, you can’t extrapolate Red Hat’s results to other enterprise software vendors. Red Hat’s continued growth is at the expense of other players.
The company reported net income of $28.9 million, or 15 cents a share, on revenue of $183.6 million, up 12 percent from a year ago. Subscription revenue was up 15 percent from a year ago to $156.3 million. Non-GAAP earnings excluding a tax benefit were 16 cents a share, a penny better than expectations (statement).
Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst was asked on Red Hat’s earnings conference call whether customers were buying more servers or just leaving other operating systems like Solaris. Whitehurst said:
September 22nd, 2009
Torvalds calls Linux "bloated" and "scary." Is he right? [poll]
Has Linux become a victim of its own success?
At the LinuxCon conference in Portland this week, Linux creator Linus Torvalds dropped a bit of a bomb when he said that the open-source kernel had not become the “streamlined, hyper-efficient kernel I envisioned when I started writing Linux” and instead was now “bloated,” “huge” and “scary,” according to reports.
Bloated, huh? So does that mean that Linux is starting to look more like Windows? Matt Asay, who writes the Open Road blog on CNET says that, yes, Linux and Windows are starting to show signs of resemblance. He writes:
I suspect that successful open-source projects, generally, will increasingly look more like Microsoft as they grow. Simultaneously, Microsoft is slowly learning from open source, and I think it will capitulate, too.
Torvalds’ comments came after Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, boasted some growth in Linux: 2.7 million lines of code added to the kernel in the last year with 10,923 lines added daily but only 5,647 deleted daily.
I’m not deeply entrenched into the Linux community so it’s tough for me to chime in here. I know Linux is powering smartphones out there and data centers, as well, and I know that both smartphones are doing more while data centers are becoming more efficient.
So I turn the debate over to you. Cast your vote and feel free to chime in.
Loading ...September 11th, 2009
Red Hat: Quiet winner amid Sun's server apocalypse?
Oracle has thrown down the hardware gauntlet against IBM to stem the bleeding at soon-to-be-acquired Sun Microsystems—assuming the EU plays along—but Red Hat may be among the big winners amid the server wars.
Too often, we look at IBM’s shredding of Sun on server sales as a hardware story. IBM, HP and Dell appear to be taking share from Sun. So much so that Oracle is opening a blitz to stop the Sun bleeding and take on IBM directly.
Here’s the IDC tally:
So what is replacing these Sun boxes? A few industry contacts—who conduct some of these server swaps—have noted that Sun is being replaced by Dell, HP and IBM boxes. And most of these boxes are running Red Hat.
Add it up it appears that while most of us are focused on the server wars Red Hat may be quietly gaining share in the background as Linux gains share.
September 8th, 2009
Microsoft training materials teach Best Buy employees how Windows beats Linux, Mac
New unearthed Microsoft training materials for Best Buy employees shows them why Windows 7 is better than Linux (update: and Mac OS X!).
The full manual, which is posted on Overlock.net boards, instructs employees how they can:
September 2nd, 2009
IBM, Dell gain server share amid server sales carnage; HP share flat
Server sales continue to tank with worldwide server revenue falling 30.1 percent in the second quarter to $9.8 billion. That decline has set up a market share duel that IBM appears to be winning, according to IDC.
According to IDC server revenue fell for the fourth consecutive quarter to the lowest sales tally since the research firm began tracking it in 1996. Unit shipments also fell 30.4 percent in the second quarter compared to a year ago. First quarter server sales fell 26.5 percent.
Simply put, few enterprises are refreshing their servers. What do you do amid the carnage? Duke it out for market share. IDC reckons that companies will have to refresh their servers at some point, but it’s unclear when.
In the meantime, here are the standings that illustrate how IBM and Dell are gaining share:
Dell and IBM have ganged up on Sun, the weak link, to gain market share, and HP stayed flat.
Under the hood:
- Windows Server revenue fell 27.7 percent in the second quarter, but Microsoft had 38.1 percent market share.
- Linux revenue fell 28.9 percent in the second quarter to $1.3 billion. That sum is good for 13.8 percent market share, up from 13.5 percent a year ago.
- Unix server sales fell 30.9 percent in the second quarter to $3.1 billion. IBM gained 7.4 percent of Unix server market share to 41.4 percent. Sun had 27.3 percent of the market followed by HP at 24.8 percent.
August 13th, 2009
Open-source voting: Secure over obscure?
At the OpenSource World event in San Francisco, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen says open-source software can help improve security in voting systems. Even with built-in security measures, though, potential human error among thousands of volunteers will put them at risk.
August 12th, 2009
OpenSource World kicks off with sparse crowds, nothing-new keynote
If the attendance at the opening keynote for OpenSource World (formerly known as LinuxWorld) serves as a barometer for anything to do with the economy, the tech industry or even trade shows, things are not looking good.
There were no lines this morning to get inside San Francisco’s Moscone Center, a place that I’ve had to fight my way through for events such as the Google Developer’s Conference and MacWorld. In fact, the large auditorium where most keynotes speeches are delivered was dark. This morning’s keynote speech was being held in the smaller rooms where breakout sessions usually occur - and there were a lot of open seats.
Then came the introduction of Judy O’Brien Chavis, director for business development and global alliances at Dell, a last-minute substitution for another Dell exec who couldn’t attend.
While Chavis was engaging and enthusiastic in her delivery and spoke with authority about the topic, she was also a bit rattled. Her presentation slides were out of order and there were several periods of awkward silence as she found her groove.
The biggest problem I had with her keynote speech was that she didn’t seem to say anything beyond what we’ve been reading in a number of tech-centric blogs - ZDNet among them. For the most part, she talked about utilizing the cloud and virtualization to reduce costs and improve efficiencies in the data center. And it was unclear from the start whether she was trying to bring new insight into next-generation technology or offer a sales pitch for Dell’s offerings.
The bottom line, she said, is that the cloud is about business model flexibility. “I’m not saying that everything qualifies to be in the cloud,” she said. Companies will need to assess what belongs in the cloud and what belongs in the data center.
She noted that Dell is focused on the disruptive changes in the industry, making investments in services that the company can deliver and is extending its cloud services model to help clients create new models.
It’s unclear if attendees decided to sleep in and skip the 8:15 a.m. keynote speech. There does seem to be some enthusiasm around the smaller breakout sessions - so there’s still hope that this year’s event (which feels like a completely different show from last year’s Linux World) can still be salvaged.
July 30th, 2009
Open-source bonuses for the big guys [video]
At the AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford University, panelists discuss benefits that huge companies like Google and Facebook could get from embracing open source, such as third-party developers integrating their products into new application versions and easier connectivity with emerging technologies. Panelists include Ron Yekutiel, CEO of Kaltura; Kim Polese, CEO of SpikeSource; and moderator Matt Asay, vice president of business development at Alfresco and a member of the CNET Blog Network.
July 16th, 2009
Microsoft gets its edge back
Is it just me or is Microsoft a little more competitive than it has been in recent years? Microsoft has gotten under Apple’s skin—at least its lawyers—got Google’s attention with Bing and is even doing the Web app thing. Microsoft almost seems to be enjoying itself as honchos like Kevin Turner proclaim: “Competing is fun.”
The second part of operating chief Turner’s quote is: “Now, competing is a lot more fun when you’re winning than it is when you’re losing.”
Rest assured that Microsoft will win a few and lose a few, but you gotta admit the company is more interesting to watch these days. Let’s survey the battlefront.
May 15th, 2009
Is an IBM purchase of Red Hat inevitable?
Despite a bevy of questions—looming competition from Oracle, takeover rumors and a weak economy—Red Hat appears to be humming along, according to Jeffries analyst Katherine Egbert. But in the long run, Red Hat will have to be subsumed into a large company—most likely IBM.
In a research note, Egbert touches on the short-term and long-term prognosis for Red Hat. In the short run, she notes that there’s solid demand for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Jboss in a down economy. Meanwhile, sales to the government—Red Hat has just beefed up its sales force to sell to Washington D.C.—are expected to get a stimulus boost.
Egbert’s take echoes research by Piper Jaffray analyst Mark Murphy. Murphy surveyed 70 Red Hat customers and generally found that the company is gaining wallet share.
Here’s the money slide from Murphy:
Simply put, Red Hat is looking strong. Wall Street is expecting the company to report earnings of 14 cents a share on revenue of $171.7 when its fiscal first quarter closes at the end of May. But there are a few moving parts. The biggest one is Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems. Will Oracle continue to support Red Hat products?
Egbert writes:
While Oracle’s CEO has said publicly that he will continue the company’s support of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), there is a sense within Red Hat that an increased focus on Open Solaris over RHEL is inevitable, as Oracle seeks to protect the declining Solaris maintenance stream. We estimate that 1/3 of Red Hat’s new business comes from Unix-to-Linux migrations, much of this from Solaris-to-Linux. The danger to Red Hat is that Oracle will offer customers attractive terms to stay on Solaris, potentially even paying them or offering discounts not to migrate.
If that scenario plays out Red Hat will increasingly be caught in the land of giants with Oracle on one end and Microsoft on the other.
That reality points to a Red Hat takeover at some point, argues Egbert. She adds:
We believe it’s inevitable that Red Hat will be subsumed into a larger entity, probably IBM, given the strategic importance of RHEL with the data center. Here’s our reasoning:
To date, much of Red Hat’s success has come because the software is relatively inexpensive, Unix applications port easily to Linux, and because Red Hat is not Microsoft i.e. they are not a large, integrated vendor that can lure customers in with low pricing but exploit their pricing power once the customer becomes dependent on the software. Most customers view Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a way to break free of large vendor lock in and the high economic toll it extracts.
However, with Oracle buying Sun Red Hat now has 2 giant competitors, both of whom have virtually unlimited pricing power. We believe it will be increasingly difficult for Red Hat to compete over a sustained period as a small, standalone, independent vendor against the upcoming entry of Oracle, who could offer cheap hardware/software bundles, steep discounts to stay on or migrate to Open Solaris, or even pay customers to not use RHEL as they seek to stabilize the Solaris maintenance stream. Therefore, with Red Hat’s choice-based value proposition potentially pre-empted by a data center land grab among 2 giants, it seems to us that Red Hat needs a partner. A large partner. Someone with pricing power, C-level relationships, and a significant enough presence in the data center to combat the Oracle/Microsoft threat. IBM fits the bill.
Indeed, IBM could totally offset the threats to Red Hat from Microsoft and Oracle. A deal would make sense because:
- IBM could bundle RHEL;
- Jboss would complement Websphere;
- IBM could leverage Red hat developers;
- IBM would get and operating system and virtualization tools to play in all layers of infrastructure.
- The IT game is increasingly becoming a matter of dueling hardware and software stacks. Red Hat would provide IBM with more software ammo.
April 20th, 2009
Have we arrived in the post-Windows era?
Microsoft knew this day was coming. This was the reason it desperately wanted — no, needed — to take down Netscape in 1996. Netscape wasn’t just trying to build a program for reading text and photos across a network of connected computers. Netscape was trying to build a new platform - the ultimate platform - to run software and share information instantly and on a global scale. And no one understood that better than Bill Gates.
Gates had recognized a similar shift a little over a decade earlier when he first saw Steve Jobs’ Apple Macintosh and its graphical user interface. Gates knew it would make his text-based operating system, DOS, irrelevant. So he created Windows and eventually stole Jobs’ thunder.
It took Gates slightly longer to pick up on the power of the Web, but once he did he immediately grasped its potential to make Windows irrelevant. That’s why he catalyzed Microsoft to create Internet Explorer and drive Netscape into oblivion, by any means necessary. By 2000, Microsoft had pulled off the great reversal, taking 80% share of the Web browser market, which Netscape had dominated at 80% just four years earlier.
April 16th, 2009
What Price Time? The Factor That Decides If Either Mac or PC Is Cool
It’s been interesting to see how much attention has been awarded to Roger Kay’s attempt to take down the Mac, What Price Cool? — sponsored by Microsoft.
That should have consigned the paper to the dustbin in the first place. Hey, if Hershey’s commissions a survey of doctors on zits, do you really think it’s going to come back citing chocolate as a root cause?
But not so here. This report was issued last Thursday (a week ago). It got attention the next day from Fortune, a little later from MacWorld, a bit later from PC Mag (which is no longer a magazine) and this morning showed up again on Slashdot.
It’s fun reading, if you want to think that people get passionate about the Mac or the PC based on design and cute ads alone or you happen to like to take apart price comparisons, between different platforms.
There’s no question that cost matters more now than a year ago. Out of pocket expenses are clear and quantifiable. Yes, you’ll pay an upfront ‘tax’ in most instances for buying a piece of Macintosh hardware and, maybe, software.
But there is a key cost that almost always seems to be absent from these comparisons: Your time.
This is natural. How does one compute the cost of one’s own time? It’s invisible. You tend to think of it as having value only when you can produce savings in personal purchases. The reward for the time you put into the purchase is the $300 or $500 you saved in the checkout receipt.
But then you have to live with the real cost: Wasted time. And, then you can’t recoup the $300 or $500. And the price keeps going up, if you bought a system that does not work well for you.
This came back to me this week, when I used my wife’s Toshiba laptop to retrieve some statistical files from the federal government that would only open up on a Windows machine. Booting up does matter. So does reliably connecting to the Internet. So does loading a browser. Easily, i lost five minutes just waiting for this particular system to get ready to take the first character of instruction.
I’d used this machine extensively over the summer, to avoid buying another laptop in this household. And found it slow at every turn. But worse, there was some inexplicable combination of keystrokes that would inevitably start to send the cursor flying to distant parts of a document, when I was trying to type up a post or other document in Word. Never solved it.
The point here is: This is probably isolated to one person. But that one person — me — has to make a decision as to what makes his time the most productive. For me, I’ve consistently found the Mac to be more reliable, more logical, and faster than a machine running on Windows, whatever the version.
If you’ve got a system — Mac or PC — that doesn’t work well for you. the price gets paid every day, in your time.
Let’s say you make $50,000 a year, a bit above the roughly $45,000 median for a male and $40,000 for a female American. Let’s say that establishes the value of your time at $24 an hour. And you’re losing just five minutes a day, which IMHO would be a conservative estimate of the time that I would lose (but someone else might not) on a Windows PC. That’s at least $14 a week, if I were to use the machine just once a day and only use it for a short time.
That’s going to be a loss of more than $700 in the first year. Which will more than make me wish I had bought a Mac. Which I wound up doing later anyway.
This whole “who is cooler” argument is way beside the point. The question is: Which operating system and ecosystem — Mac, PC, Linux or even “other” — lets you keep your cool and make the greatest use of the scarcest resource in life:
Your time.
April 13th, 2009
Survey reveals pent-up demand for Windows 7 - and alternatives
A survey reveals that 84 percent of IT pros don’t have plans to upgrade to Windows 7 in the next year and half of respondents are considering alternatives, but it pays to parse a few nuances.
Andrew Nusca has the details on the survey, which was conducted by Dimension Research and commissioned by KACE, a systems management appliance company. The survey (Techmeme) had 1,142 respondents and 99 percent of them had Windows installed at their companies.
The spin here is that it’s somehow bad that most IT professionals won’t jump to Windows 7 in the next year. However, Windows 7 is still in beta and hasn’t been released yet. Of course, 84 percent won’t upgrade to Windows 7 in a 12 month time frame. If you go April to April and Windows 7 is launched in October-ish that means IT pros would have just six months to make the leap. In the OS upgrade world that speed just doesn’t happen.
Cast in that light, this chart below looks pretty impressive to me.
So within two years 59 percent of IT pros will upgrade to Windows 7. The good news: That’s some pent up demand. The bad news: Vista is the reason there’s pent up demand.
But what really caught my eye is the secondary headline about Windows alternatives.
The headline: 50 percent of IT pros are considering a move from Windows. Operative word: Considering. You’d be dumb not to consider a move. In fact, I’d argue that the other half of IT pros aren’t doing their job: You should always assess alternatives.
Of the 50 percent considering a move away from Windows 14 percent are actively making a jump. That’s up from 11 percent in 2008 and 9 percent in 2007. Your choice: Determine whether the money quote here should be:
- Of 50 percent of folks considering a move from Windows, 36 percent stayed.
- Of 50 percent of folks considering a move from Windows, 14 percent are bolting. Alternative OSes gaining steam.
The truth is probably in the middle.
And another nuance to ponder. Apple’s OS X is the most likely platform to replace Vista or Windows 7 with 27 percent eyeing the Mac platform. The rub: That percentage is down from 29 percent in 2008.
Perhaps the headline should be that Vista, Windows 7 and OS X are in decline—for Ubuntu.
Check out the chart:
In any case there’s a lot of fun with numbers that can be played with this survey.
April 7th, 2009
GPL's cloudy future
One of the things about getting older is that you learn to ignore things until you have to do something about them. It’s a learned efficiency, I suppose, rationing your increasingly precious time out to the unceasing demands upon it. I finally realized I have to do some serious thinking about cloud computing.
“Hang on a minute, don’t you work at Google ?” I hear you say. Well, yes, but in my defense many of the people who work at Google don’t have anything to do with cloud computing. Some of us have to keep the conference rooms clean, write Open Source/Free Software, things of that nature.
But several recent events have stirred my aging brain into action. These events included the departures of two of my colleagues, who were leaving their current, extremely stable employment to join increasingly risky cloud computing startups. That’s not so strange here in Silicon Valley. I remember some wacky people leaving nice safe enterprise computing jobs to go do something strange with “Web 2.0″ startups, and look how that turned out. One of them drives a Ferrari now (but he always was a bit of a show-off). The third event was from a rather more unlikely source, the Free Software Foundation’s (FSF) annual General Meeting, LibrePlanet, held in Boston.
March 30th, 2009
TomTom, Microsoft settle: Who caved?
Microsoft and TomTom said Monday that they have settled their respective patent infringement suits, which raised patent issues with everything from file system patents to the General Public License for open source software.
Once you read the press release the next natural question is: Who caved?
Microsoft’s suit garnered attention because it was the first time the software giant filed a suit over its assertion that Linux infringes on its intellectual property.
However, the settlement doesn’t seem to answer a lot. In many respects, the settlement release reads like one of those Securities and Exchange Commission deals. The SEC and the company in question settle, but no one admits or denies guilt.
Also see: Microsoft: Litigate on FAT, and you’ll be the next Unisys
Consider the moving parts of the settlement:
- TomTom will pay Microsoft for the eight car navigation and file management system patents in the case.
- Microsoft gets coverage for four patents in TomTom’s countersuit.
- Microsoft doesn’t pay TomTom.
- Past and future sales are covered where the patents are in question.
- TomTom’s patent coverage for Microsoft’s three file management system (FAT) patents allow it to remain compliant under the General Public License version 2 (GPLv2).
- TomTom will remove two FAT patents from its products and has two years to do it. TomTom’s customers get patent coverage in the meantime.
- Both sides say they are happy and that the open source community should be happy too.
Loading ...March 26th, 2009
Red Hat: Customers less scared now
Red Hat chief Jim Whitehurst said that customers aren’t as shell-shocked as they were three months ago. The good news: Enterprise buyers don’t see a depression on the horizon. The bad news: It remains to be seen whether enterprises will be in the buying mood and Red Hat has to work harder to gain sales.
In an interview with Reuters, Whitehurst said:
“I don’t think people are quite as scared as they were a couple months ago. A couple months ago people were really worried we were falling off a cliff. It has stabilized since then.”
Whitehurst’s comments came after Red Hat delivered solid fourth quarter results that were two cents better than estimates. And Red Hat’s outlook for the first quarter and fiscal 2010 were in line with expectations.
On a conference call with analysts Whitehurst indicated that Red Hat was garniering interest because it could cut IT costs:
While our existing key customers continue to renew and increase the scope with their commitments to Red Hat, we are also seeing increased interest in buying from approximately 40,000 new customers drawn to our high value low cost product this year alone.
However, Red Hat does have to spend more on sales and marketing to get more customers. Whitehurst added:
Now looking at fiscal 2010, our key strategic initiatives are designed to strengthen our long-term growth profile and gain market share in the face of a turbulent macro economic environment. First, we will drive for broader mainstream adoption like expanding our marketing and commercial capabilities around our award winning solutions.
The company reported net income of $16 million, or 8 cents a share, on revenue of $166.2 million, up 18 percent from a year ago, but only 1 percent from the third quarter. Adjusted earnings were 22 cents a share, two cents better than estimates.
For fiscal 2009, Red Hat reported net income of $78.7 million, or 39 cents a share, on revenue of $652.6 million, up 25 percent from a year ago.
The mileposts for the quarter were strong:
- Red Hat had billings of more than $200 million;
- The company had more than 100 deals topping $250,000;
- 30 percent of Red Hat’s largest deals included middleware (JBoss);
- 100 percent of its top 25 customers renewed;
- Sales and marketing expenses for the fourth quarter were $4.24 million, up from $2.6 million a year ago;
- Research and development fourth quarter spending was $4.25 million, up from $2.26 million a year ago.
As for the outlook, Red Hat said that its first quarter earnings excluding items will be 13 cents a share to 14 cents a share on revenue of $171 million to $173 million. That tally was in line with estimates. Red Hat projected fiscal 2010 revenue of $720 million to $735 million. Wall Street was expecting revenue of $735 million.
March 12th, 2009
Mobile platform wars: Symbian top mobile OS globally; Mac OS X surges
Gartner has tallied the global smartphone sales by operating system and the results put Symbian as the top dog with market share of 47.1 percent with RIM’s BlackBerry OS a distant second at 19.5 percent.
Here’s a look at the figures for the fourth quarter (statement, Techmeme):
And 2008:
The statistics are a very relevant followup to my post on Wednesday trying to sort out what platforms developers will ultimately pick. After all, each of these platforms will have marketplaces and there are only so many developers. And all of these platforms will be vying for share in what is expected to be a down market. IDC said Thursday that it expects global mobile phone shipments to fall 8.3 percent in 2009. So called converged device shipments are expected to increase 3.4 percent globally.
Also see: The war for mobile developers is on: Do you have to pick sides?
What’s notable is that our unscientific poll revealed that few people saw Symbian as an operating system worth betting on.
Based on market share it appears that developers should be focused on creating applications for Symbian, Research in Motion, Windows Mobile and the iPhone as a turbo charge for growth. Palm remains too much of a wild card.
However, that decision isn’t all that easy to make. Excluding Symbian the mobile operating systems are bunched together in market share. For 2008, Mac OS X had growth of 245.7 percent, according to Gartner. The BlackBerry platform had the second best growth at 96.7 percent. Clearly, growth dictates focusing efforts on those two platforms.
Other notable points from Gartner’s tally:
- Fourth quarter global smartphone units were 38.1 million, up 3.7 percent from a year ago. For 2008, 139.3 million smartphones were sold, up 13.9 percent from a year ago.
- Nokia had market share of 40.8 percent in the smartphone market at the end of the fourth quarter with RIM second at 19.5 percent. Apple had 10.7 percent.
- In the fourth quarter, Linux-based smartphone sales were up 19 percent from a year ago due to Android-based T-Mobile phones.
March 11th, 2009
The war for mobile developers is on: Do you have to pick sides?
Microsoft has offered up more details on its mobile developer strategy, matched Apple’s App Store revenue split and offered a more transparent process for app approval. With the details of Microsoft’s plans revealed developers are hit with a conundrum: What mobile platform do you bet on? After all, Apple, Microsoft, Research in Motion, Palm, Nokia and Google’s Android all have application markets launched or planned.
But here’s the problem: There are only so many developers and there is only so much time. At some point developers will have to choose sides–or at least eliminate a few platforms as options. In the end, this selection process is likely to come down to a few obvious items:
- Money;
- Reach of the platform;
- Developer relations.
In the grand scheme of things all three of those items are probably equal. Meanwhile, all of these application markets offer similar revenue splits–developers get at least 70 percent of the revenue.
From there the winnowing down process becomes a game of market share and relations with developers.
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
For daily updates, follow Larry on Twitter.
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- AT&T launches Verizon counter-punch ad, keeps digging that hole+14 votes
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