This Story Posted:
May 20th, 1999

 
 

[3:02 PM]
Report Reveals Ugly Truth, Literally: Web Design To Become Totally Windows Dominated
A report issued by IDC reveals the ugly truth. Web design will become increasingly dominated by Windows designers and the face of the Internet will likely become uglier for it. The report says that web design software sales, already a fraction of current Windows web design software sales, will shrink between now and 2003. According to IDC:

Products in the Web authoring and design software market are currently created for either the Windows or Macintosh platform. According to IDC, the Macintosh segment of this market is in demise. Revenues on this platform will deteriorate from $34 million in 1998 to $29 million in 2003. During that same time, Windows revenues will soar from $209 million to over $1.2 billion.

Microsoft is benefiting the most from this explosive market opportunity. In 1998, its FrontPage product captured a dominating 74% of revenues on the Windows platform. "FrontPage's feature set satisfies the needs of all types of users. Additionally, the vast user base of Microsoft Office and the company's strength in the business computing markets contribute to the product's success," Brigham said.

Adobe, with PageMill and CyberStudio, was the leading vendor in the Macintosh segment with 46% of 1998 revenues.

In 1998, the United States accounted for almost 58% of the total worldwide market with $140 million. However, IDC expects growth in the US market will peak in 1999, and by 2001, the international market will be larger. "Vendors are going to have to increase their efforts to deliver rapid product localization and adequate marketing abroad by 2000, which could be costly for unprepared vendors," Brigham said.

We called IDC to find out more about the report and what it was based on. We spoke to Joan-Carol Brigham, Research Manager for IDC, and the author of the report for IDC. Ms. Brigham told us that the report looks strictly at software sales, and not other factors like design houses. In addition, small business owners who are designing their own web sites has been on the increase for several years. According to Ms. Brigham:

From 1997 to 1998, the actual number for small businesses who have their own web sites doubled from 680,000 to 1.26 million. That number is expected to increase to 1.76 million by the end of 1999.

FrontPage from Microsoft is a big contributor to the big increase of Windows-based development. Says Ms. Brigham:

Professional graphic houses do not figure too much into our results because we are looking strictly at software sales. The truth is that Windows-based businesses are growing at a remarkable pace. These business owners rely on Microsoft.

The report is called "Web Authoring and Design Software Market Review and Forecast, 1998-2003" (IDC #B18943) and can be purchased directly from IDC (contact [email protected]).

The Mac Observer Spin: Our first impression on reading the IDC press release was that they were off their rocker. Everyone knows that a large percentage of web design is done on Macs. But this is not exactly the case. A large proportion of professional web design is done on Macs. Ms. Brigham told us she does not see the number of Mac professional design houses to be growing much, but the professional market is not the center of this study. The study is centered strictly on software sales and we think it is very possible that IDC's conclusion could be right on the money. Web design will increasingly be performed on Windows machines, though not necessarily at the professional level. The future of web design will increasingly be in the hands of businesses doing their own work and not professional designers, hence this study is right.

This is a frightening thought. FrontPage is an evil product in our opinion. More specifically, the vast majority of web sites we have seen designed with FrontPage are absolutely terrible. There are certainly exceptions out there.

[Editor's Note: Mac Observer Editor-In-Chief Bryan Chaffin was in the web design business before taking up the mantle here at The Mac Observer. Small business owners who think they can design their own sites are typically wrong. They can't design. Once again, there are certainly exceptions to this rule and we are sure that there are some excellent sites out there developed with FrontPage on a Windows box. They are just not the rule.]

Some factors that could greatly affect the results of this survey in the future include Apple's increasing penetration into the SOHO market. The iMac has certainly helped in this area, though Apple lags far behind Wintel in this market.

The introduction of a Windows version of Adobe GoLive could also impact these results.

IDC