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Comment by Sean1708 | Hacker News Reader

Wikipedia says that Windows accounts for well over 70% of all desktop use[0], I personally wouldn't call that a 3-way split.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...

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I only have a Windows PC for gaming. I'd gladly switch to Linux if all games were also available there. (I tried wine and stuff like that ages ago, but that was just a pain.) Windows has effectively a monopoly on gaming PCs.

One third of the games I've purchased on Steam are available on Linux.

I guess the perception of whether or not Microsoft effectively has a monopoly in the gaming PC market segment really centers around the games you play.

1/3 is pretty poor coverage. State it this way: "In order to play 2/3 of available video games, you must have Windows."

Poor coverage? For an operating system that has single digit desktop market share?

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. :)

I understand where you're coming from, but the market share doesn't really figure into my argument of coverage. If the idea is "should I adopt or not," and I like gaming, then the % coverage is a highly important statistic. I can still step back and say "well isn't that nice, Linux has 1/3 of games ported and only 500 people use it! Good for them!" Won't change the fact that I need to use windows if I want to play all games.

Poor coverage exactly because it has single digit desktop market share. There's not enough market, therefore it doesn't get enough product. The end result is that if you want a broad choice in games, you need Windows.

Fortunately there's been a lot of great games coming out for Linux too recently, mostly thanks to cross-system frameworks like Unity, I assume. And that's great, but not really enough to threaten Windows' position in the PC game market.

Windows also has a monopoly on enterprise and government PCs. There aren't too many 100k-employee organisations out there whose desktop SOE is non-Windows.

but what profit % do they have?

Android dominates mobile OS usage, but iOS has equal profits if not greater than Android

If you take only desktop (which is what I was thinking about), windows is waaaaaaaaaay dominating the game. Chromebook might as well not exist (I haven't seen one, ever. I'm in europe though), so the only contender is Mac. But with all the lock-in and momentum Windows has, sure it might not be a monopoly in the technical sense, but it sure as heck feels like one.

Microsoft is making billions dollars of profit from Android's devices just with their patents licensing:

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/microsoft_on_the_issues/...

How is Android profit calculated? Does it include the value of the data collected with it? How do you calculate iOS profits? Can you separate the value of the hardware from the software?

News flash, desktops aren't anywhere near the most dominant computing platform anymore.

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