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Weblog:   Microsoft Mac FUD, Phooey!
Subject:   Slight Math Correction
Date:   2002-07-20 20:33:01
From:   spenser
Sorry, Tim, but when I went to school (granted that was a really long time ago), 300000 out of 800000 was 37.5% penetration, not 20%.


Anyone who thinks that Office's market penetration has anywhere near as much to do with the sniping as Apple's "Switcher" campaign is being naive.


There are two things holding Office's penetration back -- a lot of the OS X sales have been to Unix converts and if anyone thinks less of Microsoft than Mac-fanatics, it is the Unix and Linux world. Office isn't going to sell to those people. The second is Office's pricing. The upgrade price is almost reasonable, but it is more than many are willing tospend when they had recently purchased Office: 2001 (which still works in Classic) and they don't feel that the additional features, even being native, are worth the cost. I bought it because I needed it for work.
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  • Tim O'Reilly photo Slight Math Correction
    2002-07-22 18:22:22  Tim O'Reilly | O'Reilly AuthorO'Reilly Blogger [View]

    Ah, but the MS 300,000 figure was for 2002 ytd (6 months) while the Apple figure was 800,000 for the second quarter. 300,000 isn't 20% of 1.6 million either but given the precision of the data (I know neither how many machines Apple sold in the first quarter, nor how many had OS X installed), 20% seems like a pretty reasonable rounding of the data.


    As to the analysis of OS X adoption being heavy among the Unix/Linux crowd, that confirms my own observations. However, I would disagree that that crowd doesn't want Office. While they often dislike Microsoft in theory, in practice, dual booting under Linux is extremely common, because people do need to read and write Office files.

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