When it comes to market share for
desktop operating systems, Microsoft probably has about 95% and
definitely more than 90% of the OEM share.
But most Linux distributions are
installed (single, dual, and multi boots) on machines originally
purchased with a Microsoft OS. Also, end users change their Windows
machine more often than Mac and Linux users. So, the OEM market share
info may not my be the right guage.
And if you are designing a Web site,
the other problem that could arise is that a particular Website may
have a very different user base.
For instance, a Website dedicated to
Web design recently said that 6% of its users came to their site
using Safari. My interpretation is that the total number of Mac users
(including FireFox and IE) was much higher.
So, about two weeks ago, I put a site
counter on two of my blogs to get an idea the OS and browsers people
use to come to those blogs. One of the blogs is mainly used to post
interesting stories from www.digg.com.
The other is used to post my thoughts, opinion and observations on
economy, technology, finance, philosophy, globalization, etc.
I have regularly monitored the
visitors, their referring URLs, their OS and the browser they use.
About 250 visitors have visited the two
blogs so far – a fairly good sample size, I would say. So far, I
have been pleasantly surprised. Here are some quick numbers: About
61% of the visitors use FireFox, 27% IE, 8.5% Safari and the
remaining Opera and Netscape. In OS: 73% is Windows, 15% Mac and
about 12% for Linux.
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