Firefox market share bounces back 668 plus 13
You are deviating from the COLA party line, thad! The more useful definition is that Microsoft...
When Microsoft first released Internet Explorer, the only way to get it was to download it from Microsoft. It was a loss leader intended to steal market share away from Netscape and wrest control of web standards. That it is now delivered by bundling with Windows makes no difference; the goal remains the same. Microsoft continues to fund development of IE even though it generates no direct revenue. That is the very definition of a loss leader.
After takin' a swig o' grog, billwg belched out this bit o' wisdom: No. See below. No. I'm not dealing in a mere likelihood: Office...
And you refuse to believe that loss leaders are used to build market share. Astonishing! This just confirms that you do not have anything resembling a clue regarding how business really works. The loss leader is a fundamental concept taught in every business school worthy of the name. Building a market for additional products and services is one of the fundamental reasons for doing it. This is why free browser market share matters. It is also why free Linux market share matters.
Of course we have not even mentioned the most clbuttic example of a Microsoft loss leader, the XBox. MS sells every unit at a loss in the hopes of making it back on game revenue and content sales via their Live service.
Well, here is the definition of Market Share from an old macro econ textbook:
All I see is things like " "Government funding should be for work that is available to everybody," he says patriotically...
"A company's share of total sales of a given category of product on a given market. Can be expressed either in terms of volume (how many units sold) or value (the worth of units sold)."
And since I've been out of school a few years, here is something a bit more current from Wikipedia:
"Market share, in strategic Debt Management and marketing, is the percentage or proportion of the total available market or market segment that is being serviced by a company. It can be expressed as a company's sales revenue (from that market) divided by the total sales revenue available in that market. It can also be expressed as a company's unit sales volume (in a market) divided by the total volume of units sold in that market."
Note what both of these definitions have in common: that market share is measured in both dollars and units.
I wonder who is wearing the blinders here. I graduated with a degree in computer science and MIS. I took three years of managerial cost accounting, micro and macro economics, business statistics, and other business related courses on top of the full load of computer science courses.
More important, I have owned and operated my own business for over a decade. I've developed and sold software to customers world wide and provided consulting services to clients ranging from tiny startups to fortune 100 corporations. I've personally used loss leaders to build brand recognition and land follow-on consulting work, so I know just a little bit about what I am talking about here. Forgive me if this all sounds a little egotistical, but I can back up my opinions with real experience. Can you?
What exactly is your business experience? Do you own a company? Manage one? Do you even work in the technology industry? I'm actually curious, because you seem to have very strong opinions but also hold some strange misconceptions about some very basic business concepts. I'm just trying to understand your perspective better.
Thad