[canonafficionado]

Ballmer is looking pretty fired up at the moment in interviews and dumping on Mac, but especially Google and Chrome.

Mr. BALLMER: "The most successful by far is Firefox. Chrome is a rounding error to date. Safari is a rounding error to date. But Firefox is not. The fact that there’s a lot of competitors probably is to our advantage. Yeah, we’re right now about 74 percent overall with the browser market, roughly speaking. But we’re having to compete like heck with IE 8, with great new features. The other guys are getting more and more unanticipated competitive attack factors, the thing that Google announced yesterday where they replaced IE but they don’t tell you. I mean that’s how I would say it. For all intents and purposes of what they’re doing IE is not there. It’s their operating system. Instead of now masked as browser, it’s masked as a plug in basically to IE. So, you know, we’re going to have to compete like heck and you know, see where things go. The one thing that’s unclear is what’s the economic play for anybody else competing with us at the browser level. Is this all about kind of controlling the search box or is it about something else?"

"Mr. BALLMER: Here’s Windows and Windows is a very successful product. How do you attack Windows? Well, you attack with the high end, and hardware. That’s an attack. That’s – I won’t call it the Snow Leopard attack. I’ll call it the Mac attack of which Snow Leopard is a piece. You could attack from the side. That’s the Chrome – Firefox attack. You can attack from cheap, from below. You’re not from the side. You’re one on one, but that’s kind of a Linux, Android, presumably Chrome OS, who knows, attack vector. You can attack through phones that grow up. You know, mama don’t let your phones grow up to be PCs or something. I don’t know. But that’s another attack vector. So, you could say how do I feel about all these attack vectors? Strong, I feel very strong here.

I mean, we’re gaining share. Apple is expensive. And in tough economic environment, people get it. Their model is, by definition, expensive. And we’ve actually held or maybe even gained just a tiny bit of share relative to the Mac in the last 12 months. And it’s not really Snow Leopard. It’s really Windows PCs versus Mac.

You know, Google is talking about building an operating system with the name of its browser. Nobody should be confused. The browser they think of is the operating system and the question is you know sort of like Marc Andreesen in the late ’90s is back at work at Google."

Have to admit his point about Chrome OS (or whatever its called) seems spot on! It does look 90s.

Full, interesting, confusing, interview at TechCrunch

[harryb2448]

'Shine on shine on harvest moon.....'

"Rave on rave on full (Ballmer) moon..........."

[thatfilthyspringbok]

Microsoft PR really need to speak for Ballmer. Maybe he'd actually make sense then!

[Currawong]

Apple must be doing something right if Ballmer is talking out of his arse about them.

[grfxninja]

I am always interested in hearing what Ballmer has to say, though generally I can't make any sense out of it.

This is no exception…

[Ozracingwrap]

Well as usual a bit jumbled but I think his points are interesting. Overall PC did gain on Mac (laptops I think Mac gained) as as he says it is not just a SL V Windows thing but also a hardware play.

At the moment the lack of an update to the iMac is no doubt hurting a bit and the mini continues to sit a bit in no mans land (can you say Apple TV Mini) so desktops are not maybe the strong point.

I give a small nod to economic times and pricing being an issue but I don't think that is as big a factor as some say. Though it seems in the US the Laptop hunter ads have worked to a degree (the fact Apple complained about one clearly shows they were sitting up and taking notice).

Google are coming at them from different angles but like him I am not sure in the long run any of them will be the thing that brings Windows down. Though Windows Mobile does seem very under pressure now and some radicall changes are needed there or it will become the rounding error in the smart phone space. Of course not sure how much Microsoft really care about that though. Office and Windows are their main game.

[Lutze]

Apple have out performed the PC markets this year by a large factor - they have increased sales every quarter - and the PC makers have sold a lot less. How that equates to Mac market share shrinking I can't figure out.

Balmer is crazy - when he starts to make sense I'll get worried that M$ is doing better. The only hint of a tell in his statements were that he mentions Windows - not Vista, not XP etc. He uses the catch all. So maybe he's including Windows Embedded?

[marc]

A rounding error? Firefox being the only competition to IE?

Ballmer needs to buy a fucking clue. WebKit is charging forward:
kottke.org visitor trends and statistics

IE (all versions) only accounted for 2.32% of Bjango.com's overall traffic this month.

What we're seeing these days is a huge disparity between modern niche sites and larger, high traffic sites. On the niche sites, IE is being destroyed. IE won't ever struggle while Windows is strong and IE is preinstalled, but I think it's safe to assume that WebKit (Safari & Chrome) are putting a huge dint in Firefox and IE's market share in key areas.

Originally Posted by canonafficionado

Well, you attack with the high end, and hardware.

...

I mean, we’re gaining share. Apple is expensive. And in tough economic environment, people get it. Their model is, by definition, expensive.

Because winning the high end of the market (where the biggest revenue is) would be so bad?

"According to NPD, in June, nine out of 10 dollars spent on computers costing $1,000 or more went to Apple. Mac revenue market share in the "premium" price segment was 91 percent, up from 88 percent in May."
Apple has 91% of market for $1,000+ PCs, says NPD | Betanews

If I was M$, I'd be scared, if not a little cautious. They're losing the mobile battle and it looks like they're going to slip unless they're careful in the desktop space. Win 7 will help, but maybe it's too late to keep Apple as a niche player?

[canonafficionado]

If Ballmer appears to be very sure of the quality of their OS (plus IE and WinMo), but unsure of what is going to happen next in terms of all the competing platforms (from browsers to phone), you have to wonder whether their internal strategy is just as confused.

With all the possibilities (or vectors?!?!) that he mentioned it still seems that even the hugely successful MS have few great indicators as to what is going to happen next.

[chuck]

Quick rough results from the 30 odd sites that I have google analytics access to; September 2009 the minimum Mac OS percentage of users is 10%, the highest is 20%. In comparison to September 2008, it has almost doubled.

Sept 09 Browsers on average
IE 65%
Firefox 21.5%
Safari 10%
Chrome 2.5%
Opera 1%

Safari and Chrome are not rounding errors at 13% and MacOS is really forging ahead. Most of these sites are aussie sites and general use/Ma & Pa sites. Nothing very tech related and I think are a good snapshot of general public use. I'd love to give you more info but due to work privacy etc that's all I can do for now.

[marc]

Thanks for the stats chuck!

The US probably has higher Mac usage than Aus, so there's a good chance most US ma & pa sites would be even higher again. I highly doubt Microsoft don't know this. They must just be in the denial.

[Lutze]

The only problem with the stats is that they don't seem to show a difference between Safari and Mobile Safari.

Would be interesting to find out if that data is available.

[marc]

Originally Posted by Lutze

Would be interesting to find out if that data is available.

1. Safari / Macintosh - 56.28%
2. Firefox / Macintosh - 21.19%
3. Safari / iPhone - 9.29%
4. Firefox / Windows - 3.95%
5. Internet Explorer / Windows - 2.30%
6. Safari / iPod - 1.94%
7. Mozilla Compatible Agent / iPhone - 1.35%
8. Chrome / Windows - 0.93%
9. Opera / Macintosh - 0.48%
10. Firefox / Linux - 0.35%

16.6% of Safari users are using it on an iPhone or iPod touch (assuming I did the maths correctly!).

Of note: IE has dropped from 2.32% to 2.30% in the last few days.

[Lutze]

Originally Posted by marc

1. Safari / Macintosh - 56.28%
2. Firefox / Macintosh - 21.19%
3. Safari / iPhone - 9.29%
4. Firefox / Windows - 3.95%
5. Internet Explorer / Windows - 2.30%
6. Safari / iPod - 1.94%
7. Mozilla Compatible Agent / iPhone - 1.35%
8. Chrome / Windows - 0.93%
9. Opera / Macintosh - 0.48%
10. Firefox / Linux - 0.35%

16.6% of Safari users are using it on an iPhone or iPod touch (assuming I did the maths correctly!).

Of note: IE has dropped from 2.32% to 2.30% in the last few days.

That's on your mostly Mac orientated content site though, right?

Windows users are not going to be bothered too badly to go there - that's why these things have to be done over a wide array of sites.

[Ozracingwrap]

MS Internet Explorer No 52.6 %
Firefox No 26.5 %
Safari No 13.5 %
Unknown ? 3.3 %
Google Chrome No 2.3 %
Mozilla No 0.8 %
Opera No 0.2 %
HTTrack Yes 0.1 %
Curl Yes 0 %
Netscape No 0 %
Others 404 0.1 %

I agree Lutze for our motorsport site safari is 13% and the dominant with over half is IE.

[chuck]

OK, Long weekend brings some luxury of time!

Total of 193,765 visits across 10 sites, Browser/OS averaged across those visits.

62.72% IE/WIN
19.55% FF/WIN
8.81% Saf/Mac
3.45% FF/Mac
2.79% Chr/WIN
0.52% Opera/WIN
0.51% Saf/iPhone
0.49% Saf/WIN
0.45% FF/Linux
0.34% Moz/Linux
0.16% Saf/iPod

Top 5 OSes
86.17% Windows
12.36% Macintosh
0.64% Linux
0.52% iPhone
0.10% iPod

OSes < 0.10%
SymbianOS
Blackberry
PS3
Android
PalmOS
PSP
SunOS
Unix


Our site with most hits Sept 09 (40,000+)
Windows 88.29%
Macintosh 10.56%

Sept 08 (22,000)+
Windows 93.62%
Macintosh 5.96%


PS. Do NOT watch Norbit tonight. Possibly the worst movie I have seen.

[marc]

Originally Posted by Lutze

That's on your mostly Mac orientated content site though, right?

Bjango.com... so iPhone and iPod touch users. I actually expected to see more Windows users. Totally get that our site doesn't represent the rest of the internet though.