Emerging Trends in System Software Market : A Case Study of Operating System Software

Information Technology has evolved over a period of time from Electronic Data Processors (EDP) to Cloud based technologies. Software is a critical component in this industry. The core product component in software is the set of instructions in the form of source code. During inception of the industry, source code was accessible at no cost. In the next era of information technology (1970’s & 1980’s), programs which were earlier available free of cost were sold at a price through licensing. During mid and early 1980’s open source and hardware integrated software emerged. Similar trend was visible in system software market, especially in the operating system software market. Over a period of time Microsoft operating system emerged as one of the dominant players in the market. However, in the recent past Microsoft has considerably lost its market share in operating system products from 94.38% in June 2007 to 84% in May 2014. This paper captures the trend in operating system software market and analyses customers’ preference to switch over from the current operating system. The trend in the market was analyzed through secondary data on market share and the customer preference to switch over was captured through a survey of engineers at various multinational IT firms in Bangalore. The study identified that the current trend could be moving towards open source or hardware integrated operating system from proprietary operating software. The survey identified that higher percentage of users prefer to switch over from the current operating system on desktops, laptops and workstations to either open source or hardware integrated operating system except servers