Talk:Usage share of operating systems

Linux share: Caitlyn Martin's blog piece

Is this [1] a credible secondary source? It seems to me to be an exercise in wishful thinking. It seems to be clutching at straws. As a Linux enthusiast myself I've tried to follow her argument but it doesn't stack up IMHO. She says "The best estimate for present sales is around 8%", but she doesn't cite a source for this estimate, and in any case, present sales is a very different thing from the total installed base, bought over several years, that makes up usage share.

I can quite accept that the web client stats under-measure Linux a bit, mainly because Linux users are relatively security and privacy conscious and thus more likely to disable javascript, install adblock etc., all things which reduce counting on the third-party stats sites. It's interesting that Wikimedia's figures, based on server log files and thus immune to this hazard, show a somewhat higher figure (1.57%) than most of the others.--Harumphy (talk) 14:00, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, but still not 8%. I tried to work that 8% figure in somewhere too, but the jump from 'installed user-base' to 'current sales' seemed too sharp for a short addition to existing text. The only way would be to devote a whole couple of sentences to it somewhere, and I'm not sure if she is notable enough for that. O'Reilly is a good source, but I'm not sure of her status to be speaking for them. --Nigelj (talk) 15:10, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

The only cited source there is quote from Steve Ballmer where he says that internal Microsoft research showed Linux and MacOS shares comparable. We already have this source covered. The blog doesn't seem notable enough to include in the article.Wikiolap (talk) 20:03, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Should we remove the Wikimedia web client statistics?

The article currently states: "All of these sources monitor a substantial number of web sites. Statistics that relate to a single web site are excluded." To a large extent, this is not true for Wikimedia, of which Wikipedia alone is by far their most trafficked web site (although one that most English-language Web users have visited).

Also note that the Wikimedia report is based on the total number of HTTP requests rather than the number of unique clients (as determined using cookies). We need to consider the merits of the two approaches and which is more accurate. The Wikimedia report could easily be biased toward those operating systems used by those who access Wikipedia more often (although the others could be influenced by how much of each browser's user base regularly clears cookies). On these two principles, should we exclude the Wikimedia statistics? PleaseStand ^(talk) 00:48, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikimedia's stats cover 60-odd sites within the Wikimedia family.[2] While this is much less 'substantial' than many of the other sources, it's much greater than 'one', the avoidance of which (specifically w3schools) was the original purpose of that sentence. (From time to time we get people trying to add w3schools' stats to the table, or suggesting that we should on this discussion page. Often they seem to be unaware that that site's stats are for its own site only, and that that site is aimed at web developers - a highly atypical readership with a much more diverse set of web clients than the general web-using population.) Also, the Wikipedias are very high-traffic sites. The English one disproportionately so, granted, but there are similar regional/linguistic skews in many of the other stats sources too. So I wouldn't exclude Wikimedia stats on the grounds that they monitor an insubstantial number of sites.

AFAIK there's no evidence to suggest that certain operating systems are used by those who access WP more often. Just as there's no evidence that certain OS's are used more by those who clear cookies, block scripts, use adblock etc. I imagine many of us have our suspicions in this regard, but no actual evidence. And if we had such evidence, the magnitude of the biases they introduce may be no larger than many of the other biases we already know about and to which all the sources are prone. So I don't think there's a case for excluding Wikimedia stats here, either. Harumphy (talk) 11:05, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Northern Ontario Jacob12190 (talk) 11:06, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Web client table tweaks - January 2011

I propose to make a couple of minor tweaks to the table when the December figures come out in the new year, unless there are objections here first:

1. For the Clicky desktop/mobile 'in lieu' split, take the mean of the Net Market Share and Statcounter figures instead of just using Statcounter. (This will probably have the effect of reducing Clicky's mobile share from around 4.1% to around 3.6%.) The footnote will explain what has been done.
2. Android is rising rapidly and within a few months may overtake what we currently call 'mainstream' Linux. I propose to change the "mainstream" sub-heading to "desktop distros.". Harumphy (talk) 14:56, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

2) Oppose. There are several other mobile Linux distributions such as Maemo currently included within Mainstream Linux.1exec1 (talk) 00:24, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough. I've done #1 but not #2 in today's update.Harumphy (talk) 11:09, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Should we remove AT Internet Institute from web client stats?

We're seeing constant changes in the data, month by month (summary of each month here). With lack of frequent updates by ATII, we're ending up with less accurate results... 195.23.92.1 (talk) 18:18, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Support 1exec1 (talk) 00:55, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Be consistent - if we are to remove sources which don't update every month - then remove all of them, i.e. including Wikipedia one. If Wikipedia stays then ATII should also stay. Wikiolap (talk) 17:12, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Remove - ATII is consistently slow at updating their stats. Remove for January's stats, unless they update. As for Wikimedia, we have a little more control over it. I've emailed the person updating the stats in the past, I think we just need to have him set up something more automated, because I think he has to manually run his scripts. Or talk to someone else that has access to the logs and can give them to us. Jdm64 (talk) 18:57, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Keep. Last time we discussed this (see archive) we decided to keep stats for up to 12 months. It used to say as much in the web client section. (Somebody, unaware of the discussion and seeing that all the stats at the time were more recent, changed the "12 months" to "few months". I've just changed that back.) If 12 months is too long a period, then we should reduce that period. Whatever we do, we should apply the same time limit to all the sources.Harumphy (talk) 19:21, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I, the guy who raised the issue in the first place, agree with this item, them. I didn't know nor found out anywhere that the discussion was held in the past and that "12 months" was decided. Since it was, let's just abide to the decision. 195.23.92.1 (talk) 14:09, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, I haven't found any discussion in the archives. The problem is that the software market evolves very rapidly. Most of the time initial adoption of some product increases exponentially, by allowing 12 month delay we face data errors of more than 10% [3]. For example now AT Institute data is different from the median/mean data in Windows columns by huge margins (W7 - ~7%, Vista - ~4%, XP - ~11%). If we reduce the allowed delay to, say 6 months or less, we can lower the possible data errors more than two times.1exec1 (talk) 12:10, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

The 12 month precedent came up in Talk:Usage_share_of_operating_systems/Archive_1#web_clients_summary_table, in a brief discussion about what to do with OneStat data from Dec 8, 2008 that was getting on for one year old at the time. Jdm64 suggested "less than one year old" and I agreed - nobody else took part in the discussion. We removed OneStat on Dec 9, 2009. For a long time afterwards the article mentioned 12 months, which I recently reinstated.

As far as the time limit goes, I don't think it matters about AT being 'out of date' because (a) it's an encyclopedia, not a news site, so up-to-the-minute topicality is not essential, and (b) our choice of median rather than mean does a good job of excluding outlier figures. Harumphy (talk) 15:04, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Median Windows Numbers

I've been playing with the Median numbers, which I had intended to quote in an article I was writing. I'm not quoting them. The numbers do NOT add up. No matter what I've tried, I cannot get those numbers of make any sense, and since there is no explanation of the calculations used to determine the Median, the only conclusion I can draw is that the numbers were either invented, or are in error. So instead of reporting your numbers, I'm reporting them, and my conclusion that this article is in error. If you want to look at the article, which is my prediction for where OS usage shares will be in 2012, it will be at: http://madhatter.ca

One other point - Netbooks should be included as Notebooks, and Tablets should be in a separate category, due to the form factor. Tablets have more in common with phones than they do with notebooks.

UrbanTerrorist (talk) 20:01, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

The medians are calculated just like any other median, surely? In each column, the median is the middle value of the group. Thus the median of 1, 2 and 999 is 2. Where there is an even number, it's the mean of the middle two, so the median of 1,2,3 and 999 would be 2.5.) Are you saying that our table doesn't do this? If not, what precisely do you think does not add up?Harumphy (talk) 20:08, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Are they calculated like any other median? Who knows? There is no explanation as to the method(s) used, and no reference to an explanation. In effect we are given numbers, and told to believe them, which is against the policies of Wikipedia. Either provide an explanation, or remove the median figures.

UrbanTerrorist (talk) 14:49, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

The Median label links to Median article which explains how medians are calculated. Do you consider this is not enough ? Do you propose adding a footnote with more details on it ? Wikiolap (talk) 18:51, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

The term 'median' has a precise meaning and there's only one way of calculating it. Anyone who wants to can calculate the median herself and get the same figure. The problem here is not the article, but your inability to click on the link to the median page to find out what it means. Harumphy (talk) 13:58, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

A link to the explanation would make things clearer. UrbanTerrorist (talk) 07:51, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

And the very common problem of confusing median with mean. or believing they share some properties that they do not. Like adding up to 100 % (under certain circumstances). The different properties are not necessarily easy to understand, and the article is quite heavy for somebody not used to mathematical theory. --LPfi (talk) 10:49, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Which is why an explanation, or a link to an explanation is needed. UrbanTerrorist (talk) 07:51, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

I should mention that I'm using the numbers for some articles that I'm writing, and I want to make sure that they are as accurate as possible, thus the questions. And yes, I link back to the source.

What gives with server market share BY REVENUE.

Revenue doesn't measure server market share, it measures how much money the supplier of one type of server rakes in. It also measures how much purchaser have had to pay for servers of that type ... both of these are the same number. Becuase some types of server cost far more than others, the metric skews the perception of market share towards which servers cost the most. These are perceived as having a greater market share, even though they may have relatively small numbers.

Furthermore, there are far more purchasers of servers than there are suppliers. Ergo, from the overwhelmingly predominant perspective, it is better to label this number as COST rather than revenue. Far more people would see it as a cost as opposed to those who see it as revenue.

So, I will keep trying to change the word "Revenue" within the server market share section to read "Cost" instead, until it sticks, because this wording gives the proper perspective on it from the vast majority viewpoint.

Alternatively, one could remove the "Revenue" metrics entirely, because they simply do not show server market share as they purport to.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.210.63.179 (talk) 10:46, 9 January 2011

Please sign your comments - otherwise we won't know who said what. Please see Wikipedia:Signatures.

Before you 'keep trying to change the word "Revenue" etc.' please read Wikipedia:Edit_warring.

As you've said, revenue and cost refer to the same number. It's the same sum of money seen from the two sides of the deal. The sources we're citing measure sales, not purchases. So revenue is the more accurate term in this context. Harumphy (talk) 13:59, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Why include market share by revenue figures at all? They're useful for stock investors (i.e. which OS is generating the most revenue from a given market), but they will deceive casual readers expecting to learn about the "Usage share of operating systems on servers". Wallers (talk) 14:16, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

IDC and Gartner are well known sources in the server industry. They report in revenue probably because business people are more interested in the money instead of the number of units -- it's what their use to. Also it's easier to measure because you can't just check what OS a server is running like you can with desktop web browsers. A server could be hosting several virtual servers (upwards to 15) and each virtual server can have it's own ip address. So without detailed investigation, you'd see 15 servers when in reality there's only one real server. Henceforth, the real number of servers (as opposed to number of installs of an OS) is more closely correlated to revenue. Although, it gets complicated because the licensing of Linux servers can be free if the company goes with a distro without 24/7 support (like debian or centos) or it could be costly if paying for a full subscription of RHEL. So, even-though Linux is low on revenue, it's still really high in actual usage. Jdm64 (talk) 18:20, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Jdm64 wrote it exactly right. There are different metrics to measure market share, and they indeed measure different things. Market share by units is interesting to know who which server OS is most popular. Market share by revenue is interesting to see which server OS vendor is making most money. So there is no contradiction - both are interesting, both are useful, just for different purposes. Wikiolap (talk) 18:11, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

"Making the most money" also means "getting the most money out of people for less cost to yourself". "Revenue" is a word with positive connotations in people's mind, whereas "Cost" has negative connotations. "Revenue" and "cost" are the same number ... what is revenue to sellers of servers is cost to buyers of servers. Since there are far more buyers than sellers, it is in the best interests of more people to show market share from the perspective of buyers rather than sellers (that is, to show it as cost rather than revenue). A casual reader might see the OS with the highest revenue and without thinking about it associate that positive term with "the best choice", when in fact it is the most costlly to him/her. From this perspective, citing statistics for sale value(price) of servers, labelling it as positive-sounding term revenue, and claiming that this shows "market share" is doing a sever dis-service to most people. In fact, it comes perilously close to free advertising for one company, which I would have thought goes against Wikipedia policy.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.210.63.179 (talk) 14:08, 11 January 2011

I think you are stretching the definition of the advertising a bit :) Your thinking about positive vs. negative association is interesting, but it is your opinion only. In encyclopedia we cite verifiable and reliable sources - and both Gartner and IDC qualify as such. They label the metric Revenue, and we must respect that.Wikiolap (talk) 18:54, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

IDC also report units, so there's no reason to use revenue, and I've changed the numbers to the unit rather than revenue figures. For the Gartner figures, I checked the source, and they appear to be unit figures as well, not revenue figures.Shalineth (talk) 06:36, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Can you show where in the source the reported percentages are refered as units ? In the table that we cite, the column headers say Revenue. Wikiolap (talk) 20:53, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

The Gartner source is a three-year-old Reuters article. The text in the article reads:

According to research firm Gartner, the Windows share of global server shipments gained a percentage point to 66.8 percent in 2007 from a year earlier. Open-source Linux's share fell by a percentage point to 23.2 percent last year and Unix dropped to 6.8 percent in 2007 from 8.1 percent in 2006.

Note that this refers to the share of global server shipments, i.e. units, not to the share of global server revenue. The figures are also similar to IDC unit figures from about the same time, but very different from IDC revenue figures. It was only in 2005/6 or so that Windows severs overtook Unix servers in terms of revenue, but Windows has been ahead of Unix in unit shipments since the 1990s.

The IDC figures in the table are indeed revenue for server hardware (not revenue for operating systems), but it is a methodological error to use this as an indicator of server OS 'usage share'. What possible sense is there in saying that one server costing €20 000 and running one instance of AIX contributes 40 times as much to the AIX 'usage share' as one server costing €500 and running one instance of Linux or Windows?

I had provided a source for IDC unit shipments and corrected the table to include them, but this was reverted.

In a comparison of server revenue or server profitability, prices matter. If HP, for example, are selling a lot of €50 000 servers and Dell are selling a lot of €1 000 servers, that has a huge impact on their respective results. If each server runs only one copy of an OS, however, the 'usage share' is 1 for each server. The idea that multiplying server operating system units by the cost of the hardware the OS runs on somehow represents 'usage share' is completely nonsensical. Shalineth (talk) 16:28, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Overview section

Recently somebody added the overview table, and various editors including me attempted to knock it into shape. I don't think we've been very successful. I can't see where many of the figures come from. The web client medians don't (and shouldn't be expected to) add up to 100% and so don't constitute 'share' anyway. Should we delete this section, or can it be improved? Harumphy (talk) 08:55, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I'd lean for deleting it. Many of the fields are blank because some of the selected OSs come from disjoint usage (ie. mainframe and smartphones). Although, the one thing going for the table is the quick summary. I'd purpose that key stats from the table to be included in the opening paragraph. Something to elaborate on the current opening, but with some actual numbers. Jdm64 (talk) 10:32, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Does anyone want to speak in the overview section's defence? If not I'll delete it in a couple of days from now. As far as putting figures in the opening paragraph goes, ideally that would be done in a way that doesn't need updating every month. Harumphy (talk) 09:12, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I vote to delete it, the idea of this overview table never appealed to me, and it doesn't look like it is helping the article. Wikiolap (talk) 17:26, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Now deleted as agreed. Harumphy (talk) 10:14, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Tablets

Tablets need to be moved to their own section. They have nothing in common with Netbooks, though they may replace them in some sales. Netbooks should be combined with Notebooks, the difference between them is artificial.

UrbanTerrorist (talk) 07:55, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes. A netbook is just a small laptop/notebook. I've changed the sub-heading "Netbooks and Tablets" to just "Netbooks". There's very little info on tablets as a category so far. The main one is the iPad which runs iOS and this gets covered anyway. Do all tablets speak mobile, or are some them WiFi only?--Harumphy (talk) 09:20, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Font sizes

I've reverted 1exec1's changes to a couple of tables, in which the font size was fixed at 85% of normal.

Please, if font sizes look too big on your computer, it doesn't mean they look too big on everyone else's. The web is not a wysiwyg medium. You can adjust your browser's normal font size to suit your preferences. I have adjusted mine, and I don't want you reducing the font size on my computer (and everyone else's) just because it looks better on yours!

Besides, from a graphic design point of view it looked awful. --Harumphy (talk) 09:37, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Possibly dubious server share claims based on websites

Are there any authoritative sources suggesting that scanning public websites is a reasonable way to estimate server market share? It seems rather dubious to me. For one thing, Linux is well known as a good OS for running web servers (the LAMP stack), so a sample of web servers may not be representative of servers in general, but rather biased towards Linux.

Another problem is that a single server OS can host a large number of small websites, whereas a large website may require several servers, especially if it makes heavy use of SSL. If website characteristics differ across sites, then an estimate of server market share based on the number of websites would be biased towards the system most favoured by smaller, less complex sites. Netcraft report a 50 per cent Windows share for SSL websites (http://news.netcraft.com/ssl-survey/), compared with a 25 per cent share for non-SSL websites, which suggests that estimates based on websites may indeed be biased towards Linux.

Unless an authoritative source suggesting that counting the number of public websites using a particular server OS is a valid way of estimating server OS market share, this looks like original research, and I suggest it be deleted. A separate section on web server OS share might be reasonable. Shalineth (talk) 06:55, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Netcraft is reliable and verifiable source, and we properly reference it. They choose to analyze OS share of web servers, and we accurately mention it. Hence this is not original research. Some readers may or may not agree with their methodology, but it is really not up to us to make judgments whether or not we like it. As encyclopedia we report citing reliable and verifiable sources. Wikiolap (talk) 20:51, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Netcraft present website statistics, not server OS market share. You're confusing two different things, and that's where the original research lies. It's like looking at valid statistics for flights out of a particular airport and claiming that represents airliner market share.Shalineth (talk) 11:13, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Marketshare Servers based on websites is totally misleading

The current server share language is complete nonsense. It somehow asserts that webs servers are a good indicator of server share. That is utter nonsense. The vast majority of servers are not web servers.

There has been edits made to temper the uncited claims in this section, but they have been reverted.

It's clear that this section is merely a +POV apology for certain products. It's clear that wikipedia is being used as a promotional tool for certain products. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.206.8.177 (talk) 18:59, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

There are two issues here:

1. The explanations in the Server section are indeed unreferenced, and this invites people to add even more unreferenced material. I am OK with completely removing the text, but the past experience shows that someone will add it again anyway. The better approach is to find reliable and verifiable references for that portion (something I wasn't able to easily find myself).

2. Methodology of measuring market share. We as encyclopedia should not pass judgement on whether some methodologies are "complete and utter nonsense" or not. Some people claim that measuring revenue is nonsense, some claim that measuring web servers is nonsense. Everybody is free to make their opinions - but we as encyclopedia just report on what our sources say - Gartner, IDC, Netcraft etc.

Wikiolap (talk) 20:12, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Re: #2; "We as encyclopedia should not pass judgement on whether some methodologies are "complete and utter nonsense" or not." I agree. But in this context, presenting only publicly available webservers -- in a conversation about Server OS Marketshare **is**.

The discussion re: web server marketshare is irrelevant here, in this context. All the uncited material from the above paragraph and the data in the "method units (web)" table should be removed. This is intentionally misleading and utter nonsense to compare oranges to bananas in way.

173.206.8.177 (talk) 20:29, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Could you tell why exactly you want to remove web units data?1exec1 (talk) 22:56, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

We have had, at various times, three different methods of counting servers in this section: unit sales/revenue/web servers. All three have strengths and weaknesses - there is no clear-cut right and wrong here. We should just report all three, perhaps in three separate tables, pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of the methods too.--Harumphy (talk) 00:00, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Reporting all three in separate tables sounds like a good first step. Based on the source, however, the Gartner figures are units, not revenue, so that's wrong to start with (I corrected the mistake, but someone reverted it with no explanation). Reporting server market share in both units and revenue would be the best idea.

Website share should be split out into a separate category, since it's a completely different issue from server OS market share. The text is also horrible, and should probably be deleted. I made some minor improvements to make it less POV, but those were reverted too.

If you oppose splitting the website figures into a separate category, can you point to an authoritative source that claims Netcraft's website survey has anything at all to do with server market share?

Overall, it's obvious someone is abusing the article to promote a particular POV. I'm not really interested enough to bother with it, but maybe someone with more time on their hands can correct this. If not, I suppose it'll be another case where the reputation of WikiPedia is damaged by a zealot pushing a particular POV and reverting any corrections or attempts to make the text NPOV. Shalineth (talk) 11:32, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Web servers are a subset of servers-in-general, so I think the best thing to do would be to do units and revenue in two tables, then add a sub-heading "Web servers" with the third table in that new sub-section.--Harumphy (talk) 13:45, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, certainly, but web sites are not the same as web servers. I imagine it takes an enormous number of servers to run www.facebook.com, for example, whereas even a small server could run hundreds of very simple sites. The fact that web servers are a subset of total servers is a minor problem. The bigger problem is that there is no one to one correspondence between web sites and web servers, much less between web sites and either servers generally or server OS installations. This means that, barring authoritative evidence to the contrary, web site numbers cannot be considered valid estimators of even web server OS market share, much less overall server OS market share. Shalineth (talk) 14:50, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

3. The definition of "server" is broad. Web server market share might be estimated via the web while giving numbers for File server market share (down to NAS) via web is a challenge. --95.117.233.197 (talk) 13:59, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

4. The conjecture that IDC or Gartner figures substantially underestimate Linux or open source servers is logically unsound. As documented here, IDC unit figures for server shipments include Windows, Linux, Unix and other. Servers sold with no operating system would thus fall into the other category. However such servers make up only about 0.3% of the total (for Q1 2010). This implies two things:

1. The Windows and Unix market shares, 75.3% and 3.6% respectively in Q1 2010, are minimum market share levels, and do not overstate market shares for shipped servers.

2. The Linux market share is not substantially understated. Even if Linux is installed on every single server that didn't ship with either Windows or Unix, its Q1 2010 market share would only increase from 20.8% to 21.1%.

In light of the above, I suggest that the unsupported conjecture that IDC numbers understate open source server operating systems be deleted from the article, unless authoritative evidence to the contrary is provided. Shalineth (talk) 14:50, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Suggestions for correcting server market share section

I propose the following corrections to the server market share section:

1. Remove unsupported text claiming that IDC/Gartner figures understate open source OS share.
2. Remove irrelevant web site share figures for possible inclusion in a separate section on website OS shares.
3. Correct labelling of Gartner unit figures, which are currently mislabelled as revenue figures.
4. Replace methodologically incorrect IDC server hardware revenue figures with methodologically correct server unit figures.

I probably shan't have time to check the page before next weekend. Comments appreciated. Shalineth (talk) 16:35, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

1 - I support removing all unreferenced claims.

2 - measuring market share of web sites is a valid method that at least 3 different sources use (Netcraft, securityspace, w3tech) - we should not remove legitimate reliable and verifiable sources. We already have some text which tries to clarify difference between methodologies. Maybe this text could be improved, but it should not have unreferenced claims either (see #1)

3 - Gartner reports revenue. The source is reliable and verifiable, but not public - the report itself costs money. I had access to it couple of years ago, I will try to get access again and verify that it is indeed revenue.

4 - IDC reported market share by revenue, and it is perfectly valid methodology (IDC is reliable and verifiable source). I used to have additional line in the table for IDC numbers by unit, but it was removed by other editors. I will be happy to add it back.

Wikiolap (talk) 00:46, 13 February 2011 (UTC)