[quote author=“bb-15”]I voted for “Not in our lifetime”.

I see the OS method of using desktop computers as being viable for 50+ years. And I see MS as being entrenched in global government agencies and large businesses for PCs. MS is also completely dominant in poorer countries including China and India.

For me to predict that MS would eventually be a minority in world PC OS marketshare in our lifetimes, I’d need to see where some other OS in about 10 years would be on track to grab about 20% worldwide marketshare. This is not happening. Yet.

imho at least, BB

I agree.  The Apple OS will always be superior for any number of reasons.  But I think Apple does not want to become Microsoft and have a majority of the market share. They want to make great OS and great products.  If more people buy them that is great, but they will not sacrifice quality.  Therefore there will be a premium paid for their products which will result in some limitation of market penetration.

Microsoft has a huge advantage that will hard to overcome.  With 90% market share and a very stable installed base of corporate and consumer customers, I don’t see Apple becoming a majority if at all for another 30 years.

Re: not so simple

[quote author=“rwahrens”]
The recent figures for Japan are significant, because they were MARKET SHARE figures.  They showed Apple with a 68% share of the PCs sold in that market during that period.  That’s market share, folks!

According to the TMO article they are stating SALES GROWTH, not marketshare.  Their sales have grown by 60%.  Very impressive but not to be confused with market share which in Japan is still pretty low.

Mac OS X sales growth climbed at a rate of 15.5 percent year-over-year, to 60+ percent, while the sales growth of Windows declined from 75.3 to 28.7 percent.

Re: not so simple

According to the TMO article they are stating SALES GROWTH, not marketshare.  Their sales have grown by 60%.  Very impressive but not to be confused with market share which in Japan is still pretty low.

My mistake.

I still stand by my other remarks, tho.  The poster’s remarks just above yours illustrates my point beautifully, with his remarks about 90% market share.

Break out these different markets, and you will see different numbers. 

Apple’s share of the consumer laptop market runs almost 17%, last time I saw numbers.

That’s a far cry from single digits.

Also, with growing market share numbers, the installed base will grow as well.  Let your share numbers grow fast enough, with consumers replacing computers within 3 to five years, and even that number can turn around faster than you might think.

i agree with your sentiment, just want to keep expectations within grasp of reality.

Personally I think that although OS X might never achieve the rank of market leader in raw numbers it will become the biggest consumer OS in the foreseeable future.

What I was thinking of in designing the poll was copies of the OS in use, on all devices that can be said to use an OS, worldwide.  Note that the question is when will MS become a minority OS, not when will OS X overtake it, or even when OS X will become dominant.

I believe that there will be paradigm shifts in the future, as there have been every few years in the past, that will eventually kill MS’s DOS based OS.  Ten years ago a 1 GB hard drive was a large drive.  Now it is useless.  Why?  Because file sizes have gotten much larger.  Why?  Because network speeds have increased.  Similar changes will happen in the future and sooner or later the foundation upon which Windows and Vista are built will become inadequate to do the job.  In that event the MS OS dominance will disappear as fast as the 20 MB hard drive in the age of the 500 MB porn video file.

[quote author=“Zeke”]What I was thinking of in designing the poll was copies of the OS in use, on all devices that can be said to use an OS, worldwide.  Note that the question is when will MS become a minority OS, not when will OS X overtake it, or even when OS X will become dominant.

I believe that there will be paradigm shifts in the future, as there have been every few years in the past, that will eventually kill MS’s DOS based OS.  Ten years ago a 1 GB hard drive was a large drive.  Now it is useless.  Why?  Because file sizes have gotten much larger.  Why?  Because network speeds have increased.  Similar changes will happen in the future and sooner or later the foundation upon which Windows and Vista are built will become inadequate to do the job.  In that event the MS OS dominance will disappear as fast as the 20 MB hard drive in the age of the 500 MB porn video file.

Wow! You remember 20 MB hard drives! 

I remember installing those back in 1989 and thinking everyone now had storage room to spare!

Obviously M$ is in a bind with its antiquated OS and may be fast approaching where Apple was positioned with an aging OS core that required so many patches and added layers in order to accommodate demands for enhanced functionality. Apple chose the make a break with the past and develop a new OS.

I marvel at the fact I am typing this on a 5 year-old PowerBook that is running Leopard without an apparent performance hit.

Unless M$ breaks with the past and chooses to develop a new core without concerns for backward compatibility the Windows franchise will spiral toward irrelevance. We are seeing that already happen.

[quote author=“DawnTreader”]
Wow! You remember 20 MB hard drives! 

I remember seeing my first hard drive, a 5 MB with an 8” platter. I thought hell I NEVER fill that sucker up.. Who would have thought!! 

d

We’ve heard “tipping point” in other discussions. That point will occur when the fiduciary responsibility of the CFO demands the switch. It will be shortly after a well run study from unbiased researchers conclusively shows that the switch is directly transferrable to the bottom line.

Or,  “the hell with the study, my competition switched and they’re kicking our ass”

[quote author=“roontoon”][quote author=“DawnTreader”]
Wow! You remember 20 MB hard drives! 

I remember seeing my first hard drive, a 5 MB with an 8” platter. I thought hell I NEVER fill that sucker up.. Who would have thought!! 

d

It was really hard to fill a 10MB HD back in 1989. That was a really huge storage capacity. Its impressive to look at it from today’s perspective. Usual storage capacities have multiplied by more than twenty thousand fold!

[quote author=“carbonat”]It was really hard to fill a 10MB HD back in 1989. That was a really huge storage capacity. Its impressive to look at it from today’s perspective. Usual storage capacities have multiplied by more than twenty thousand fold!

Oh boy, I remember buying a 20MB HD for my Mac Plus in 1987, on which I was running Pagemaker and publishing my first magazine in the very early days of desktop publishing. That thing seemed like it would hold the entire future in those days. I think it cost me about Ј2500 or thereabouts, which was real money back then

[quote author=“Tommo_UK”][quote author=“carbonat”]It was really hard to fill a 10MB HD back in 1989. That was a really huge storage capacity. Its impressive to look at it from today’s perspective. Usual storage capacities have multiplied by more than twenty thousand fold!

Oh boy, I remember buying a 20MB HD for my Mac Plus in 1987, on which I was running Pagemaker and publishing my first magazine in the very early days of desktop publishing. That thing seemed like it would hold the entire future in those days. I think it cost me about Ј2500 or thereabouts, which was real money back then

LOL, true!

[quote author=“Zeke”]What I was thinking of in designing the poll was copies of the OS in use, on all devices that can be said to use an OS, worldwide.

Thanks for the clarification. In that case I say Microsoft is and always has been in the minority.

The only class of device that Microsoft thoroughly dominates is the personal computer. Meanwhile, there are literally billions of phones, routers, PDAs, game systems, etc. in active use which do not run a Microsoft OS.

[quote author=“David Nelson”][quote author=“Zeke”]What I was thinking of in designing the poll was copies of the OS in use, on all devices that can be said to use an OS, worldwide.

Thanks for the clarification. In that case I say Microsoft is and always has been in the minority.

The only class of device that Microsoft thoroughly dominates is the personal computer. Meanwhile, there are literally billions of phones, routers, PDAs, game systems, etc. in active use which do not run a Microsoft OS.

You may be counting BIOS as OS.