No new news in Windows, Linux battle from year-end numbers
Posted on February 29, 2008
The year-end IDC Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker factory revenue numbers were released February 27. From an operating system perspective, there’s really no new news in them (but see the press release or the relevant IDC report for vendor and other characteristics). But we mention them here for comparison with the quarter-by-quarter results we blogged on in November, September and May 2007.
For 2007 vs. 2006, the net-net is Microsoft (MSFT) Windows-based systems continued to gain share primarily at the expense of “Other” (primarily legacy mainframe-operating-system based). Unix/Linux-based server revenue was basically flat year over year with Linux open source systems continuing to displace UNIX systems as expected. Linux gained slightly more than a percent of share while UNIX lost just under a percent of share.
As we noted in November, it appears from eight quarters of IDC data that the Unix/Linux share of the market is stabilizing in the 40-45% range, although they hit 46% in quarter 4 2007 only. We will need to watch to see if this is an upward trend or a seasonal issue.
Although overall Windows-based server revenues are gaining at the expense of “Other,” such as IBM (IBM) mainframe operating softwre, the trends went the other way in quarter 4, so that is something else we will watch. I believe that blip was totally seasonal because end of calendar year buying is a 40-year pattern for legacy systems.
— Dennis Byron
Tags: Microsoft, open source, Windows, Linux, IBM
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