[OT] Market Share

[Richard Gaskin]

Kay C Lan wrote:

 > It's normally Richard who comes out with the OS Market Share figures
 > and I must admit I normally sort of switch off at that point because
 > I've sorta heard it all before - OS X is an ever so small number. I
 > mean, some of us like chocolate and others strawberry and no amount
 > of statistics is going to make that change. I use what I like, you
 > use what suits you.

Agreed. To clarify, I usually bring up OS stats only in response to the 
perennial "Why doesn't LiveCode support 
Amiga/BeOS/someOtherDefunctSystem?" stuff that comes up from time to time.

Like most Linux users I know, though I may prefer it myself I'm not 
nearly as evangelical about such things as I used to be when I used Macs 
exclusively.  After all, one of the great things about LiveCode is that 
it liberates us from the whims of any single OS vendor, so everyone can 
develop on whatever they prefer and still deploy to all.

So while market share stats should rightfully have zero impact on 
anyone's personal choices, they're useful for developers in assessing 
potential ROI.

But even then their value is limited.  No matter how you slice it, the 
desktop is always a Windows story, with both OS X and Linux relative niches.

And there's more to the story than a single data point of market share: 
  OS X tends to attract an audience of higher-than-average disposable 
income, and Linux tends to attract an audience of code contributors, so 
each offers something uniquely valuable beyond market share alone.


 > For reasons I can't explain I always thought that amongst 'real
 > programmers' the statistics would be even worse, Windows the majority,
 > Linux steamrollering ahead, and OS X a very distant and poor cousin.
 > So I found these figures... well unbelievable:
 >
 > http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015#tech-os

Developer-centric stats like those may be especially interesting to 
those who make developer tools.

That's a good find - I haven't come across it before, usually looking to 
w3schools for dev stats:
<http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp>

The w3schools stats are very different in specifics, but not all that 
different in terms of the overall story of Windows dominance with Mac 
and Linux playing minor roles:

2015       Win8   Win7	 Vista NT*   WinXP  Linux Mac   Mobile
February   21.3%  52.5%  0.8%  0.4%  4.5%   5.4%  10.0% 5.0%

There the Mac share is roughly proportionate to total market share, 
while the Linux share is much higher than the frequently-cited "1%", a 
healthy reminder that reliable Linux stats are unusually hard to come by 
given the mix of usage patterns coupled with the way log aggregation 
sites that come up with the mythic "1%" figure admittedly alter their data.

But either way, Linux isn't taking over the desktop any time soon, and 
neither is Mac.  But thankfully none of that affects our own personal 
preferences, and all three are good viable choices for working with 
LiveCode.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com