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From: jmsimon@acsu.buffalo.edu (Jeffrey M. Simon)
Subject: Re: SCO market share
Message-ID: <CHqHuK.FAC@acsu.buffalo.edu>
Followup-To: comp.unix.misc
Keywords: sco, IDC, figures lie, liars figure :-)
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References: <1993Dec3.135303.15028@ultb.isc.rit.edu> <1993Dec03.172422.1339@sco.com> <1993Dec7.160306.14988@rwwa.COM> <1993Dec07.164143.7863@sco.com>
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1993 20:49:31 GMT
Lines: 64
staceyc@socoban.sco.com (Stacey Campbell) writes:
>I of course can't prove anything and may be a victim of my own
>company's propaganda, but here's something SCO tacks on to the end
>of press releases. It quotes IDC numbers, i.e. an independent
>source, and as you can see I got them wrong, we in fact have a bigger
>market share than I thought (the terms `accounts for 65 percent of the
>market' and licenses installed may or may not be two different things).
>
> Founded in 1979, The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. (SCO) is the
> leading developer and supplier of UNIX systems for Intel
> CPU-based computers. According to International Data Corporation,
> SCO accounts for 65 percent of the market for UNIX Systems on
> Intel platforms, as well as approximately one fourth of all UNIX
> Systems installed worldwide. SCO products are available in more
> than 80 countries.
>
>If you want to read more of this type of stuff then check biz.sco.announce
>(if you have access to it). Obviously this data wasn't compiled today
>(7-Dec-1993) but I imagine it's fairly recent.
>
>If it's really important to you, maybe I can find someone in marketing
>with the report...
>--
> Stacey Campbell - staceyc@sco.com - uunet!sco!staceyc
My guess at this point is that you are a victim of your own company's _old_
propaganda, and propaganda that is based on surveys that are questionable
at best.
For the second year, I have been asked to complete IDC's survey, which I
gleefuly did (I live for being able to check other, and mention Linux as my
primary OS, check other and mention Postgres as my primary RDBMS, and check
other and mention Tcl/Tk as my primary development platform :-)
I obviously have no idea as to the mailing list IDC uses for their surveys,
but I can safely guess that they are going to people who have gotten onto
Unix mailing lists in the past. Noone who ftp's Linux or NetBSD from an
anonymous site will be put on a mailing list. Someone who shells out cash
to buy SCO or Dell or any other commercial Unix better buy bigger
mailboxes! And I know from experience. My Unix junk mail triples everytime
I buy a product that could even be _used_ with Unix (a network card I
recently acquired, for instance. SCSI peripherals seem to have this effect
as well).
My point is that IDC misses a *huge* portion of the installed _free_ Unix
user base. They will only get people like me who use commercial products
as well. And I'd guess that most of the people who get these sorts of
surveys, whether they use free OS'es/software or not, will list the
commercial software (because it's much easier to check the box next to SCO
Unix than to check other and explain...)
And also, many of the people who use free OS'es are too busy contributing
free software to fill out these silly surveys anyways :-) :-) :-)
J
BTW: I'm not trying to imply that IDC does a terrible job, or that SCO
isn't justified in using the IDC results, just that the inherent nature
of a survey like this biases it strongly toward commercial systems.
--
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