Are we nearing the end of Microsoft dominance?

There was a time when you could say with certainty that over 90% of all personal computers used Microsoft Windows as an operating system. Some figures give as a high water mark 97% of Windows use. The question is, are these numbers still sound? A look at my server logs here at castle evil shows that only 80% or so of the visitors here use some form of MS Windows. So why is it that the media report higher numbers? Part of it is the numbers reported in the media are based on what computers shipped with from the manufacturer. Since it is virtually impossible to buy a new non-Mac computer without MS-Windows pre-installed, it tends to inflate Microsoft's numbers. The actual question that should be asked how many of the shipped computers get their hard drives wiped on delivery? The sample from my site here (at about 1200 visitors a month) is that, if you use a number of 90%, at least 10% of people are changing their OS once they get their computer. Now in some sense this is still good news for Microsoft, in that people are still at least buying Windows. However in terms of a continual revenue stream, it bodes less well.

If I wipe Windows off my hard drive I will basically cost Microsoft money in the future as I will not likely be buying any other software from them. So MS will not get $500 from me buying MS Office to go on my now non-Windows machine nor will they get money from me buying any other MS based software or games. I also will not be spending additional money at the House of Bill for upgrades to the OS. This would explain why Microsoft's worried about open source software. After all, Microsoft has lost the server wars, with only 30ish percent of web servers using it's Internet Information Server compared to the 60ish percent of Apache web servers (an open source program). This makes any erosion of the desktop market share a worry for Redmond. Again, this worry is a result of the lack of follow on business, since most people are forced to buy Windows at the outset.

Another sign of trouble for Microsoft is the complete lack of rush to buy Vista, the latest Windows offering. Microsoft has been around long enough now that people have learned not to rush out and buy their latest offering right away, but to wait till they get some of the bigger bugs out. Combined with the fact that to run Vista, most people will also have to upgrade their hardware at considerable expense, no one's that keen on rushing out for the OS. This means that Vista sales are predominately with people who are buying new machines and have no choice about what OS they're getting. This new uptake of computers is also part of the problem for Microsoft, since the personal computer market is now a mature market and most people who want a computer now have one. So there won't be millions of units moving out in the first couple of weeks of sales.

So Microsoft is now getting squeezed from two sides, the one side being people choosing to run a non-MS OS on their desktop/notebook and the fact that the huge double digit growth in the computer industry is a thing of the past. Expect to see Microsoft lash out at competitors, suing them left and right in an attempt to maintain market dominance. This lashing out is doomed to fail, of course, as other industry dominating companies have tried it on their way down and it hasn't worked. Eventually Microsoft is going to become another IBM. Still a big player in the market, but no longer the dominant force.