It has been my contention for some time now that the only company able to take on Microsoft for world-wide dominion of the information technology space would be Google. There is evidence from the Internet traffic monitoring service Net Applications that there are other contneders nibbling away at the Kingdom of Redmond. Here is a quote from an aticle by John Murrell at SiliconValley.com.
Last month, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was used by 68.15 percent of the Web surfers monitored. In January 2008, that figure was 75.47 percent; in January 2007, it was 79.98 percent. If you’re in Redmond, that’s got to give you a litte shiver. The agents of this erosion? Mozilla’s Firefox browser, which started 2007 with a 13.70 percent share and finished 2008 with 21.34 percent, and Apple’s Safari, which climbed from 4.72 percent to 7.93 percent in the same span. Even Google’s new Chrome browser, still a blip in the market after being introduced just this fall, did what IE could not and won some new fans.
The Net Applications stats on operating systems were no more encouraging for Microsoft. In January 2007, 93.33 percent of the Web travelers monitored were running Windows; last month, that figure was down to 88.68. Across the same period, the Mac share rose from 6.22 percent to 9.63. And while the use of the iPhone for Web browsing is still comparatively tiny, the growth rate gives Apple even more reason to smile. In just the last six months, its share rose from 0.19 percent to 0.44 percent.
I was unaware that the Mac OS was getting close to crossing 10% market share line, so I see that as significant. Another OS to keep your eye on is Linux, which is secretly running the Internet on what is called LAMP servers (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), is howing up on low cost laptops by Asus and others. The reason for the low cost? How about saving $150-$300 on an operating system?Microsoft may have put a computer on every desktop, which was Bill Gates original vision for Microsoft. Keeping Microsoft Windows on all those computers get to be more problematic as time goes by, and people find other alternatives that work as well or better, and are lest costly.
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JAN
About the Author:
I am a cybersecurity and IT instructor, cybersecurity analyst, pen-tester, trainer, and speaker. I am an owner of the WyzCo Group Inc. In addition to consulting on security products and services, I also conduct security audits, compliance audits, vulnerability assessments and penetration tests. I also teach Cybersecurity Awareness Training classes. I work as an information technology and cybersecurity instructor for several training and certification organizations. I have worked in corporate, military, government, and workforce development training environments I am a frequent speaker at professional conferences such as the Minnesota Bloggers Conference, Secure360 Security Conference in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, the (ISC)2 World Congress 2016, and the ISSA International Conference 2017, and many local community organizations, including Chambers of Commerce, SCORE, and several school districts. I have been blogging on cybersecurity since 2006 at http://wyzguyscybersecurity.com