Washington Times: Microsoft likely to remain dominant

“By the end of the first quarter, Office suite of programs had an
87 percent share of the market for bundled, or prepackaged, office
applications, according to Reston, Va.-based researcher PC Data
Inc. Corel Corp.’s WordPerfect Office was a distant second with 12
percent of the market. … Microsoft’s hold on the market for
operating systems remains just as tight. PC Data estimates
Microsoft’s Windows operating system, the program that runs a
computer, has 72 percent of the market…”

“Linux, one of the few competing operating systems, is making a
run at Microsoft in a segment of the market. Nearly all of the
Linux operating systems on the market are in servers – the large
computers that run Web sites and computer networks – rather than in
personal computers, the market Microsoft controls.”

“Microsoft led the industry with 31 percent of the market
for server operating systems at the end of 1999, compared with
Linux’s 24 percent share, according to International Data
Corp., a technology industry researcher in Framingham, Mass.
But Linux is growing in the server market. It had a 15 percent
share in 1998 and a 6 percent share in 1997. “We feel we are
being successful in an area where Microsoft isn’t dominant,” said
Bob Young, chairman and co-founder of Linux distributor Red Hat
Inc., in Research Triangle Park, N.C.”

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