It doesn't take any insight at all – or the analysts at Gartner – to figure out which operating system supplier is the largest. It's Microsoft, of course. But which ones are numbers two, three, and four? And which is the fastest-growing maker of operating systems? The answers might surprise you. Through the magic of the …

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Monday 16th May 2011 09:15 GMT alain williams

What do you measure ?

The trouble with this sort of report is that they measure volume in terms of dollars. This weighs an expensive operating system more than a cheaper one and both more than one that is free. So how should you count: number of new installs, the amount of use (whatever that means), transactions, or ... ?

Distro watch works by counting visitorsOK for desktop operating systems, and puts Ubuntu at about 6 times RedHat: http://distrowatch.com/stats.php?section=popularity

What about the operating systems that you dont see, the ones in your broadband router and other embedded systems ?

But Gartner is paid to do research by the big boys, the ones who sell operating systems, so it is natural that they will want to make their customers look good.

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Monday 16th May 2011 09:18 GMT poohbear

Huh?

Has the writer never heard of Android?

If you're going to include iPhones then you have to include Android ...

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1. Monday 16th May 2011 10:17 GMT Bro
  
  Surely Google is Big Boy too.
  
  ... No disrespect and I agree the omission is strange.
  
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2. Monday 16th May 2011 19:53 GMT famousringo
  
  But are they counting iPhones?
  
  Well, Android revenues are zero, so that would be why it isn't here. Google makes money on ads and associated apps, but the OS itself is free as in beer.
  
  As for iPhones, they mention iOS devices, but then they throw out this sentence:
  
  "Gartner is only counting iMac and MacBooks and a thin amount of Mac OS X Server sales in this data."
  
  So, no iPhones, iPads, Mac Pros, or Mac Minis? And since almost all Mac OS X and iOS "sales" are bundled with hardware, how would you figure what revenues those are worth? I would assume they count as zero, but I would be surprised if Apple sells more than a half billion dollars a year in 10.6 upgrades and server licenses.
  
  Confusing article.
  
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