Latest Stats as at 18/8/2008. These figures cover the 15-day period 1/8/2008 to 15/8/2008. Vista Market Share ================== For period 1st to 15th August 2008, figures based on visits:- XP 71.8 (actually a slight rise) Vista 15.8 (was 15.1) Other Windows 4.5 (was 5.6) Mac 5.8 Linux 1.4 Others 0.6 This rise for Vista gives the highest figure ever recorded, and shows there must have been an effect from the announcement that XP was too old to be supported. (You would think support would date from the last service pack???) Older Windows systems are in steady decline, and are no longer viable for a whole host of minor reasons (for example no drivers for my new scanner). In the "others" category, the big three are Nokia, DoCoMo and iPhone. One might assume that surfing the net with gadgets is popular in Japan. Browser Breakup =============== For period 1-15 August: IE 71.4 (down from 72.0) FF 21.3 Safari 4.8 Opera 1.0 All Others 1.7 These figures are based on IP addresses. Opera is stuck around 1.0% but I gather their customers actually pay after a trial period. Others are in a slow decline and, on Linux, browsers other than Firefox are difficult to measure. Firefox 3 Takeup ================ These percentage figures are based on visits, and only from an OS where the breakup is clear. For example FF3 is not available for Windows 98, so Win98 is excluded. FF1 3.8 FF2 61.2 (was 65.1, 73.1) FF3 35.1 (was 30.5) FF3 was 5.2 for 1-15 June, 15.4 for 16-30 June, 22.9 for July 1-16, 30.5 for July 16-31. The big takeup since early June continues. But on the Linux front, many are still using FF1 or FF2, although the situation is improving rapidly. Many distros come with FF2 not FF3. There is a delay of course, a July 2008 Linux magazine from UK, just arrived in newsagents last week, has a DVD that was compiled in late April. Search Engines Share ==================== August 1-15 Google 84.4 (was 85.7, 86.6, 86.2) Yahoo 7.3 (was 8.0, 7.5, 7.8) Microsoft 3.3 (was 2.6, 2.1, 2.3) All others 5.0 (was 5.0, 3.7, 3.7) Recent US computer articles give Google a market share increasing and around 70%, I have always measured far higher. The above figures show a slight decline for Google, which translates as a major improvement for Microsoft, but a slight decline for Yahoo has been measured. The "others" category has jumped, perhaps I have disturbed the code. There is a problem in that not all search engines tell you the search string that the user actually typed. Why not is a mystery. No sign of Telstra's masterpiece "sensis". The only user I saw of the newly-launched cuil.com was myself. Now, just an aside. Lots of searches from Google China for "bondi beach". Homesick Aussies or potential tourists?? This search engine was not previously seen, so China has opened the door a little. Linux Distro Analysis ===================== I have experimented with Linux distro analysis for many months, but the results are far from satisfactory, for lots of reasons, but especially because so many browsers on Linux tell you it's Linux, but not the Linux distro name. For what it's worth, here are the results in visits for August 1st to 15th, 2008:- Ubuntu 12 SUSE 5 Fedora 4 Debian 3 Mepis 2 CentOS 1 Mandriva 1 Other 32-bit 60 Other 64-bit 86 Others unknown 1 As you can see, it's pretty useless but, of the named distros, Ubuntu has a market share over 40%. A situation not unlike Google or Windows is emerging with one dominant player. The other big players appear in a reasonable order. Of these others, SUSE is owned by Novell who have signed up with you know who and is thus taboo for home use, but has a commercial future. Ubuntu mainly uses Gnome, so that implies bad news for Fedora, Ubuntu is a Debian derivative, so Debian will decline, and Mandriva seems about to vanish off the radar despite its reputation for easy installation. The magazines give all the minor players lots of space, but reality looks more like Ubuntu every day. The big problem is the large amount of non-identified distros. Presumably if you upgrade your browser, you get a fresh browser string that does not include your distro name. And many distros are simply not announcing themselves anyway. My purpose in publishing these figures this month relates to the Asus mini-laptop EEE-PC and its use of Xandros in the Linux version. Whilst UK Linux magazines were jubilant that the year of Linux had arrived, Asus now has an XP version which is massively outselling the Linux version. Other manufacturers are all frantically releasing mini-laptops, and somehow M$ is doing deals to supply XP very cheaply, rather than lose any market share to Linux in what will certainly be the big market segment over the next couple of years. No sightings of Xandros yet. ================================================================