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350

Dell - You did announce how many copies of Vista sold; and the percentage of Home Machines shipped with Vista - Do the same for Ubuntu

350 points posted to Dell, Linux, Operating Systems by jmxz 07/06/07

Apparently someone from Dell apparently mistakenly responded to an IdeaStorm Idea by stating that Dell does not announce sales figures broken down by OS, and that's why they can't give out Ubuntu sales figures.

That's clearly false, because Dell does announce such numbers widely.

For example, after the Vista launch, Dell announced:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=226



Dell Computer began taking orders for Windows Vista systems this weekend. The first reports are in....according to CEO Kevin Rollins —

* 100 percent of its new consumer orders were for Vista machines
* Dell sold "tens of thousands of copies" of Vista out of the chute



So some Ideas:

A. When Dell admins on IdeaStorm explain their actions or inactions as coming from some Dell policy - they should check if it's true first.
B. How about announcing the Ubuntu figures in the exact same way you announced the Vista figures
In particular:
* What percent of new consumer orders are for Vista vs XP vs Ubuntu vs NoOS during the week following the Ubuntu launch.
* What order of magnitude of Ubuntu systems did Dell launch.
Both figures were announced for the Vista Launch. Why are you not announcing the same information after the Ubuntu launch? Fear of offending your masters?

jorge
07/06/07
technikal
07/06/07		 What if Dell is not pusblishing the data because it looks bad for ubuntu? I wouldn't at all be surprised to find that less than 1% of all units sold were ubuntu machines. What kind of ammo would that provide for the un-free OS providers out there? I can see the MS press release now - "Look - 99 out of 100 PC purchasers choose Vista over Ubuntu..."

Publishing just the ubuntu machine sales would also severly under-represent the actual number of Dell computers running ubuntu. I run ubuntu on a Dell, but I've never purchased a Dell ubuntu machine. My sale would show as a 'check' in the MS box even though I'm 100% ubuntu on the box now. I imagine it is much more likely that someone would purchase a Vista machine and install Ubuntu, than purchase an Ubuntu machine and install Windows - so ubuntu usage figures would be negatively impacted looking at just point-of-sale info.

Very few companies will ever publish individual product line information directly. It provides too much info for competitors. Most of the reports you see showing break outs (% of market served by MS vs. Apple vs Linux, number of Ford Escapes vs. Honda CR-Vs) isn't provided by the companies themselves, but is gathered by statistical analisys by research firms. If you really want to know how well Dell Ubuntu machines are doing, you could do the same kind of research.
jmxz
07/06/07		 I think the most interesting breakout would be
E1505N (the ubuntu version) vs
E1505 (the XP version) vs
E1505 (the Vista version)
on a day when all 3 were being sold.

I'm quite sure it's less than 1% of systems sold - because Ubuntu's only offered on a couple percent of the models that Dell sells.
 
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