[OT] Market Share

Kay C Lan lan.kc.macmail at gmail.com
Fri Jun 30 23:31:44 EDT 2006


On 6/30/06, Chipp Walters <chipp at chipp.com> wrote:
>
>  Certainly not reflective of the
> millions of users who have paid for XP. Virtually every Dell, Gateway,
> Compaq, Sony, HP, IBM desktop and laptop have a licensed and paid for
> version of XP. I imagine if you don't include them in your straw poll,
> you will certainly get biased information.



OK, just to make something clear. I have no doubt that the overwhelmingly
dominating OS in the world is Windows.  That is driven home to me by the
fact that where I live Palm devices don't include ANY Mac compatible
software. Store attendants adamently maintain that their LifeDrive can not
be used with a Mac! The box clearly indicates under System Requirements only
Windows details.

As you say, every named brand Windows computer comes with a legal copy of
Windows. The same can be said of every Mac. But you can buy no name brand
Windows computers. If you look back to my original post my 'question' to the
list was not the exact market share, but:

Is having 99.9% of the pirated software market good or bad?

I was blissfully unaware that MS had brought about a situation where it is
now virtuallly impossible to run a pirated version of XP if connected to the
internet. That makes my original question even more interesting - to me at
least.

I believe it is universally accepted that one of the 'genius' decisions of
Bill Gates was to go with the system that was open. Job's poor decision was
to go with a closed system. People voted with their wallet and bought the
cheapest they could - which invariable was not a branded IBM box.

So has MS now created itself a more closed market? I don't believe the
pirate market is so much a statement of the dishonesty of people, but the
reality that a large percentage of the worlds population live well below the
income level of a lower-middle class American who can barely make ends meet.
When these people vote with their wallet will they sacrafice to get that
legal copy or will they just go with the cheapest they can get; even if
nowadays that means Linux?

Again I don't care what the exact 'legal' market share is, but whether
having a dominant, growing or declinging pirate market share is good or bad?
Does this reflect what will happen in the 'legal' market share?

Just enjoying the discussion. I never knew about the optical testing
market:-)



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