market share
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| jimf Sep 30, 2005 7:21 AM EDT |
Someone once pointed out to me that a 'normal' market for any given product would be something like 40/30/10, that is , 40%-50% to the top seller, 20%-30% to second place, and, the other 10% to miscellaneous vendors. For too many years Microsoft has held a virtual monopoly in the OS market.. almost 90%+ at some points. It is way past the time when this situation should change. |
| phsolide Sep 30, 2005 8:50 AM EDT |
The whole "market share" idea has too many flaws to use it as an indicator or measure. For starters, a "market" almost by necessity implies buyers and sellers and some notion of "price", even if the market in question operates without money (ie barter). What does "market share" mean in this context? Monetary value of copies of PC operating systems sold? Can you even buy Mac OS without buying a Mac? Do pre-installed copies count? If so, at what price? What about commerical Linux distros in this context - any purchase of a Linux distro almost certainly goes on top of a pre-installed Windows installation. What about non-commerical distros, Slackware as perhaps the prime example? Or does "market share" mean proportion of the computers sold bearing a particular OS? How do you count standalone sales (upgrades from NT 4.0 to Windows XP)? Or does "market share" mean the same thing as "installed base"? That is, counts of what currently in-use PCs use as operating systems? What about dual-boot machines (WIndows 98 and NT 4.0 wasn't that uncommon a combo)? The "market" for personal computer operating systems has always had a huge skew, due to IBM's initial adoption of MS-DOS. Ordinarily, this skew would even out, but MSFT played the legal game with equipment OEMs, and kept the intial skew, or even made it worse. And then "network externalities" or "network effects" may even promote some kind of natural monopoly in this "market". I do agree that by any measure of monopoly power (Herfindahl Index [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl_index], Four-firm concentration index or any choice of "market share" above) the "market share" of MSFT products has indicated an amazingly concentrated market, in economics terms. But doesn't the presence of Linux, the various BSDs, and other freebies (VSTA, Atheos, etc etc) really change the nature of "market"? By what measure should we say "Linux has only a 1.2% market share"? On price alone in any given accounting period, it probably has a much lower share. |
| jimf Sep 30, 2005 9:47 AM EDT |
whoo... without getting very technical, it is obvious that this can't be judged in any meaningful way by a money/value figure. Open software vs commercial is a very stickey wicket indeed. I think the estimated installed systems is the only way to evaluate the situation in any kind of real world senario :) |
Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]
Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!