Who’s Microsoft’s Biggest Competition?

Ah, the age-old question. Whether you realize it or not, the market has many operating systems, but there are only a select few that are large enough to be mentioned on a regular basis. On the desktop side of things, these of course include Microsoft’s Windows, Linux and Apple’s Mac OS X. So which is the biggest threat to Redmond’s largest company? Believe it or not, it’s themselves.

In a recent presentation given by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, a slide was shown that exhibited the company’s interpretation of market share between the various OS’. Microsoft’s own Windows OS of course took first place by a rather significant margin, but second place was handed to “Windows Unlicensed”, also known as, “pirated”. No one is naive enough to believe that Windows isn’t pirated by millions of people, but it’s kind of surprising to see it mentioned so starkly on one of the company’s own charts.

In second place lands Linux, which inches above Apple. That fact in itself is also quite interesting, since this foil refers to only home and business PCs. However, this is on a worldwide scale, and given Apple doesn’t have huge success outside of the US as Linux, the results here are not all-too-surprising. Aside from OS usage, the same foil also showcases R&D costs, and not surprisingly, Microsoft takes the cake with $8.2 billion dollars invested (we assume from 2008). Apple in the same period invested $5.3 billion, while RIM invested $2.9 billion.

I think depending on how you look at it, Apple has probably increased its market share over the last year or so by a point or more. And a point of market share on a number that’s about 300 million is interesting. It’s an interesting amount of market share, while not necessarily being as dramatic as people would think, but we’re very focused in on both Apple as a competitor, and Linux as a competitor.