Linux Revenues Expected To Hit $28B in 2008

An anonymous reader writes "Key findings from a newly completed IDC market study project that the overall revenue for desktops, servers, and packaged software running on Linux will exceed $35 billion by 2008. Additionally, IDC forecasts that while Linux remains a minority player on desktop PCs, Linux penetration in that realm will reach $10B annual revenues, on 17 million units shipped globally, by 2008. A summary of the study is available as a free download from the OSDL."

Linux Revenues

[vandon]

They all sell support. Can't really sell the linux and OSS programs, but you can make a killing from support fees

Re:Linux Revenues

[plasticsquirrel]

Yeah, Novell/Suse [novell.com] and Red Hat [redhat.com] couldn't possibly sell Linux and OSS for money!

Re:Linux Revenues

[vandon]

They're not actually selling the linux, they're selling the year or so of priority enterprise class support.

Which is it - 35 Billion or 28 Billion?

[mc_barron]

...cause the titla and article don't agree.

Re:Which is it - 35 Billion or 28 Billion?

[paulatz]

The article says 35 Bilions.

50% / 60% of the desktop market

[remosain]

Down here in Argentina .... probably 50% or 60% of the new computers in the market are shipped with Linux on it (Xandros, mostly) It's done to save costs (arround 80 U$S) but its a great oportunity for Linux to grow. Of course, piracy is a big issue here, so of all the computers bought, not a lot of them stay using Linux, but it is still the first option if you want to buy a cheap computer.

Comparison please?

[Txiasaeia]

Like how much Microsoft sells per year, or how much Windows-based software is sold in terms of both the software and support over a given year? Without a comparison, it's kinda worthless, isn't it?

How are they counting that...?

[ivi]

Eg, if Hardware cost + Linux-based Software costs = 100,
are they adding 100 to the sum...?

Or just the cost of the Linux-based software
(presumably including Op Sys cost)?

And - Hey! _ Where is it written that one can't
sell OSS?!?

Consider SuSE's model & income from OSS, for one.

Scaled for Price Per Unit?

[4of12]

The screwy thing about Linux market size estimates and revenue estimates are that so many deployments can be made for so little cost that the total number of Linux installations can be huge and the dollar value of the market can be small.

This is great for Linux users, not so great for Linux vendors that think they're going to be the next Microsoft or Oracle.

Customers are getting what they want: the same drastic standardisation and commoditisation in software that they got in hardware.

Linux vendors are ha

Not bad

[GreatBunzinni]

Not bad, having in mind that we are talking about revenue generated by free software.