I think what he was trying to say is that the numbers mentioned on the page are meaningless unless you look at the situation they display. Any good statistitian<?> would have included the time frame the numbers were gained in. They probably would also have mentioned that SuSE did have a jump from just having released the new distro. Otherwise SuSE could have additionally posted month by month sales or month over year sales and we could judge on the point you make that SuSE is gaining market share. The numbers mentioned do not prove what the article is trying to say. It should have been something like this: <sample article> In February 2001 SuSE had this percentage of sales: 48% (Note: They released a new product) In February 2000 SuSE had this percentage of sales: 25% In August(?) 2000 SuSE had this percentage of sales: 35% (Note: The last time they released a new product) </sample article> These three numbers are picked by me but they tell more than the numbers in the press release. 1. They tell that you do sell more boxes when the release is fresh. 2. They tell that sales from distro to distro picked up(percentage wise if all other competitor sales remain constant). 3. SuSE gains market share. But then it all doesn't matter because the non-questioning readers read it and say "yeah great suse rocks and they gain market share" and the questioning readers know the little flaw in the press release and how to interpret it but still know suse rocks and gains market share. so its all good =) mk

From: Michael Hasenstein <mha@suse.com> To: Jethro Cramp <jsc_lists@rock-tnsc.com> CC: tbutler@uninetsolutions.com, SuSE Linux English <suse-linux-e@suse.com> Subject: Re: [SLE] SuSE, the new US leader? Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 12:17:04 -0800

Jethro Cramp wrote:

...

There was a discussion on this some days ago.

We are all pro SuSE but this is probably a marketing manipulation of the figures. Is this measured by sales (if so what period)? By downloads? By number of installations running SuSE?

This is NOT a manipulation. What on earth makes you think we manipulate?!

This is the number of boxes purchased by people during one week as measured by PC-Data. PC-data numbers don't measure everything (not all sales), but in percentage points they are okay, from our past experience.

In the weeks when we just had started with SL 7.1 it was RH-Mandrake-SuSE very close together and Caldera-Turbo waaaayyyy behind. The one week with us at 48% is of course an extreme, but we HAVE gained a lot through the recent years. What makes this really exciting is of course not this one release that's great for marketing but is admittedly an exception, but the fact we're still #1 in the latest pc-data report shows it's not just an only-once happening. Each of RH, Mandrake, SuSE can make it to #1 right now with a new release, true. But it's also true SuSE is much bigger also in the US (and not just Europe) than most people thought!

The sad news is that Linux sales are still negligible compared to Windows.

...

When you start looking at it without this kind of information the figures are meaningless.

They are NOT meaningless. It just depends on what you look for in them. They provide valuable hints. They are NOT made-up data, they are real ard facts, and if you think hard facts about real sales are meaningless... oh well.

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