A recently issued IDC announcement forecasts the continuing dominance of Microsoft operating systems within the “client operating environment” (COE) market, for the forseeable future. The COE market, as defined by IDC, consists of distributed network-integrated clients, including new technologies such as thin client application architectures and the Internet. The results, were collected during 1999 are therefore mainly indicative of 1999 desktop computer operating system trends in enterprise environments.

The 1999 IDC data shows Windows NT Workstation market share growth to exceed the overall increase in COE market size. Windows products generated approximately 87% of 1999 revenues in the COE market. The newly released IDC study predicts that by 2004 NT Workstation and Windows 2000 Professional will account for nearly 85% of all COE revenues, while residual Windows 9x product sales will account for much of the remainder, leaving little room for competitive products.

IDC analysts say Linux will continue to make inroads into the COE market, but not enough to alter the market segmentation significantly. The newly released COE report predicts that Linux and other Open Source environments will increase their revenueds from $36.9 million in 1999 to $93.3 million in 2004. “Undoubtedly, there is a lot of excitement surrounding Linux, but so far this technology has failed to ignite a broad revolution against the Microsoft-dominated desktop world,” said Al Gillen, research manager for IDC's System Software research.

 
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