Windows Loses Money, Linux Nears $1 Billion Mark

” Market analysis firm IDC estimates that between 2008 and 2013 Linux revenue will deliver a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of no less than 16.9%.

“”The economic downturn is impacting nearly every IT market segment and has placed its mark on the Linux server operating environment and client operating environment markets,” revealed Al Gillen, program vice president, System Software at IDC. “The long-term prognosis for Linux is good, but we see 2009 as a turning point for the nature of Linux adoption and deployment, as customers rationalize through the new economic realities and factor in other considerations such as the best way to use virtualization software. In the end, the markets of tomorrow are going to behave differently than the markets of the past.”

Meanwhile, following years of growth, Windows revenue has been shrinking since the end of 2008. For the past three fiscal quarters ending with mid-2009, Windows client revenue has been considerably smaller compared to the same quarters of FY2008.

Q1 2009 is the only quarter of Microsoft’s past fiscal year when the Windows client division posted b

The difference in Windows client revenue between Q4 2009 and Q4 2008 is larger than the entire Linux revenue projected for 2012. Windows dropped from $4.3 billion to just $3.1 billion. According to IDC, Linux revenue jumped by no less than 23.4% between 2007 and 2008.

Thoughts

I don’t find this surprising at all. The fact is Windows Vista was an utter failure. Vista was a failure not because of its name, or how much resources it consumes, but because it failed in many common crucial scenarios. A simple Google search on the term “Vista fails to copy files over network” will return hundreds of results of angry users. I think Windows 7 will be much better than Vista, but it won’t be as good as XP or 2000. The real question is this: Is Microsoft too late?

Ubuntu is beginning to gain a serious traction on the desktop, and Ubuntu derivatives such as Linux Mint have gotten extremly popular. Ubuntu gets easier and easier to use with every release. Its only a matter of time before they are truly on par. I of course don’t think Apple stand a chance against MS, they dropped the ball with the Vista fiasco and made no strides at all. That was Apple’s chance and they blew it…just my 2 cents.

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