According to the Gartner market research firm, worldwide operating system (OS) revenue grew 7.8 percent to $30.4 billion in 2010, with Microsoft Windows continuing to lead the market by a wide margin.
Linux server and Mac OS were the fastest-growing sub-segments in the server and client OS segments, respectively, while Microsoft maintained its leading position in the overall OS market, with 78.6 percent market share.
"Generally, client OSes outperformed server OSes and grew 9.3 percent in 2010, while the server OS segment grew 5.7 percent," said Matthew Cheung, principal research analyst at Gartner, in a statement. "The long-pending demand for PC refreshment was unleashed as the economy stepped out from the economic turndown, which drove growth of client OSes."
Among client OSes, Mac OS was the fastest-growing subsegment in 2010 as the unit shipments of Mac desktop/laptop devices saw strong sales, although from a much-smaller basis, gartner said. Windows client was still the largest client OS segment, with high-single-digit growth, particularly driven by adoption of Windows 7 and the imminent end of life (EOL) of Windows XP, Gartner said.
Mac OS grew 15.8 percent to a size of $520 million in 2010, fueled by the strong sales of Mac desktops and laptops. Apple’s making of Mac OS as a "cool" client computing OS has attracted a group of loyal customers on Mac devices and platforms, Gartner said. And Apple’s continuous innovations in mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, have prompted sales of other Apple devices and will continue to drive Mac sales, the research firm said.
"In the server OS market, Linux was the fastest-growing subsegment in 2010 as end users adopted more open-standard systems,” said Alan Dayley, managing vice president at Gartner, in a statement. “Within the Unix OS market, IBM AIX had high single-digit growth, but Unix generally experienced modest or negative growth," "The EOL threat for Unix OSes such as Tru64 and NetWare pushed the ‘other proprietary Unix’ subsegment down 39.6 percent in 2010 as some vendors retired their proprietary Unix and moved users to more open systems."
The distant second- and third-place vendors behind Microsoft’s 78.6 percent market share in 2010 were IBM and HP, with 7.5 percent and 3.7 percent share, respectively. Oracle climbed up the ranking from No. 8 in 2009 to No. 4 in 2010 by acquiring Sun Microsystems’ Solaris business in April 2009.
For more, read the eWEEK article: Operating System Software Market Hit $30.4 Billion in 2010: Report.
