[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I must respectfully disagree. Amazon dominates the English-language eBook market; many authors report over 90% of their sales occur at Amazon. There are certainly a lot of different ePub devices, but their actual market share, combined, is less than that of Amazon. Given the self-destruction of B&N (Amazon's only serious rival in the US market), I can see nothing but an increase of market share for Amazon in the foreseeable
future.

There is more than English to read in this world, and that's a market for which Amazon does not yet cater. About everything that Amazon has in azw-format in English is available in epub, but not the other way around.

Apple iPhone vs. All Android Phones is turning out like this:



The tipping point was in 2010.

Something similiar will happen to the Kindle, somewhere in the future.

I've been in the IT business for close to 30 years, so yes, I am familiar with the marketplace. About 35% of web servers run Windows Server, while almost 50% of server sales revenue is Windows Server (Source). Windows Server is not quite so insignificant as you suggest .

In that case, you should remember how the upgradable PC, running an operating system across several manufacturers' machines, killed off all the other "Our computer, Our operating system" options, including the at that time, much more advanced Commodore Aminga.

Testing how many internet servers are running MS Windows is very shaky. Your source actually says that the results can vary depending on the way the measurement is done.

Often, a one-company system is the first on the market, and it gets very big because there are no alternatives. Then the alternatives start to emerge, they'll band together using one standard. The pioneering system will most of the time not join this standard, which will eventually lead to it being swamped, and going extinct, or living in a small niche of it's own.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

This would be a better point if Apple App store sales weren't dwarfing Android app sales (by a factor of something like 3-1, despite Android's larger marketshare, or if data didn't show that mobile web browsing was 67% ios, 33% android.

There are a variety of Android phones, but it seems like a lot of Android sales are to people who are basically interested in having a phone for calling, e-mailing, and texting...and little else. Which suggests that, for people interesting in buying apps, the "walled garden" is not much of a deterrent.

The only thing you are now describing is that Apple people put more time and money into their products than Android buyers. Even if Android is twice as big in market share, it can easily be the case that Apple buyers spend twice as much time and money on their products.

The same can be said for the Amazon Kindle: they may sell more Kindles, and they may sell a lot of ebooks, but nobody knows how big all combined epub sales are.

I don't see these areas in which Windows doesn't compete as being very relevant to closed vs. open systems. Windows makes a desktop OS and is dominant in that market. Windows doesn't make embedded, say, airplane controllers, so I don't see that the fact that other companies do is very relevant to Windows success.

Windows does have embedded systems, they do have a server version, and a supercomputer version. However, as soon as *anything* has to be customized, which is often the case for any system smaller or bigger than a desktop/laptop, then Windows is out of the equation.

The only place where Windows now has a very firm foothold is the desktop and laptop market, and these are struggeling, because so many people who don't need a computer to get stuff done actually move on to tablets for things such as browsing and watching video's on Youtube.

Oh, and Microsoft and others are becoming more and more restrictive with regards to licensing, which also does not help. Read the latest on Office 2013: a license will be tied to a computer, just like OEM Windows. New computer, new Office. I already know a few people who have said that they will NOT upgrade from 2010.

Having stuff controlled by only one company is just a receipe for getting a lot of problems, if you buy into that system, IMHO. At some point, more and more people realize that, and then... *poof*. Gone.