Operating system revenues in Middle East, Africa hit $658m

• Image Credit: Virendra Saklani/Gulf News archive
• The Microsoft exhibit at last year’s Gitex Technology Week. Microsoft continued to be dominant in the operating system for servers category with a 42 per cent share.

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Dubai: Helped on by an improving economy and more investments in technology, operating system revenues in the Middle East and Africa totalled $658 million (Dh2.4 billion) at the end of last year. This was a 14.3 per cent gain over the 2009 total of $575.8 million, according to Gartner data.

The UAE came in third place with $98 million for operating system sales, behind South Africa ($166 million) and Turkey.

Microsoft continued to be dominant in the operating system for servers category with a 42 per cent share, while HP-UX had 12.6 per cent. The former easily maintained its position in the overall OS market with 73.8 per cent.

But "In the server OS market, Linux was the fastest-growing sub-segment in 2010 as end-users adopted more open-standard systems," said Alan Dayley, managing vice-president at Gartner.

"Within the Unix OS, IBM AIX had high single-digit growth, but Unix generally experienced modest or negative growth."

The EOL threat for Unix OS systems such as Tru64 and NetWare cut the "other proprietary" Unix sub-segment by 39.6 per cent globally, as some vendors moved users to more open systems.

Linux growth

Linux recorded solid growth in the regional markets for its operating system for servers and eventually closed last year with a 15.4 per cent share.

Its acceptance in the region, meanwhile, mirrored the trend elsewhere in the key global tech markets.

The vendor Red Hat saw revenues of Red Hat Enterprise Linux server license going up by 18.6 per cent to $592 million in 2010, thus taking a 58.2 per cent share of the Linux (server) market and a regional share of 10 per cent, according to Gartner officials.

The phenomenon demonstrates that the market has accepted Linux as a viable alternative to Unix and other proprietary operating systems in mission-critical environments, they add. Globally, while Linux (server) and Mac OS were the fastest-growing sub-segments in the server and client OS segments respectively, Microsoft maintained its leadership in the overall OS market with 78.6 per cent market.

The distant second- and third-placed vendors were IBM and HP, with 7.5 and 3.7 per cent respectively. Oracle climbed up in the rankings from the eighth spot in 2009 to the fourth at the end of last year, no doubt helped on by the acquisition of Sun Microsystems' Solaris business in April 2009.

Global market

Worldwide, the market for operating systems was valued at $30.4 billion in 2010, a 7.8 per cent increase from a year before, according to Gartner.

Microsoft's Windows (client) business had higher growth compared with its server version helped by a new wave of PC upgrades following the recession. Windows 7 also gained market acceptance as the successor to Windows Vista and XP.

The projected end of the licensing for the XP by early 2014 drove enterprises to accelerate migration to Windows 7 in the second-half of 2010.

The Mac OS grew 15.8 per cent to $520 million in 2010 fuelled by robust sales of Mac desktops and laptops.

Apple's marketing of Mac OS as a "cool" OS attracted a group of loyal users on to Mac devices and platforms.