It’s always difficult to try to gather accurate statistical data on operating system market share in the public sector. However, while Stanford University users can purchase any computer they want, they have to report their computer and OS into a database in order to access the Internet from Stanford campus. By looking at that data, tracking market share has never been so easy…

 

 

Mac and Windows

Right off the bat, we can see that Mac OS holds about 30% of the desktop and laptop OS market and Windows approximately the other 70%. I have left Linux out for now (see below) because it is nearly impossible to determine whether it is being used for a desktop computer or server.

Windows

If we explode the 70% Windows market share, things start to get a little more interesting. We can see that Windows XP commands 79% Windows market share. Vista has only been able to penetrate 10% of the market, barely statistically greater than the 8% being possessed by 8-year-old Windows 2000.

It’s also notable that Vista has about 10% market share despite something like 1/3rd of computers on Stanford campus having been purchased since the release of Vista. That means the vast majority of new computers are being ordered with Windows XP. Clearly Vista’s market penetration leaves much to be desired. Additionally, 10% is actually fairly representative of the entire US penetration of Vista, through the causes may be different (Stanford users have a higher average turn-over rate on computers than the rest of the US).

 

I could explode the particular flavors of Windows once again into each individual edition (Vista Business, Enterprise, Ultimate, etc.), but I’ll just mention that Windows XP Profession holds about 95% of XP editions and Business is the majority of Vista. Usage of “Home” editions of Windows is discouraged at Stanford University by being largely unsupported by the internal IT infrastructure.

Linux

As I mentioned earlier, I chose not to include Linux in the first “desktop/laptop” OS market share because it is nearly impossible to differentiate usage of Linux for servers versus desktops without enormous statistical effort. However, if you include all version of Linux, about 16% of computers (including servers) at Stanford are running Linux – a large portion are email, storage, web, and various other servers.

 

 

Linux flavors with very low representation (e.g. Gentoo’s nine installations at Stanford) are excluded from the list. And unfortunately, nearly 1/3rd of Linux instances are reported generically as “Linux”. Lazy Linux users…

Final notes

Stanford is a great look at a free-market edu computing environment with strong Mac and Linux usership. But perhaps most importantly, its low Vista penetration shows that average educational users, whether student, faculty or staff, are still very resistant to Vista and go to extra effort to purchase XP even with new computers. Vendors, such as Sony, choosing to move away from XP earlier than most may be less attractive in this sort of environment.

In the future I may do a report on computer vendor market share (Apple vs. Dell vs. Lenovo vs. HP vs etc.).