Re: Oracle to buy Sun

On Mon, 20 Apr 2009, Melanie wrote:

> not sure opensource database like PostgreSQL would suffice to say Oracle
> doesn't have a monopoly.

Adding MySQL to Oracle's market share is barely moving it.  Oracle's big
competitors are IBM and Microsoft.  According to
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssTechMediaTelecomNews/idUSN2634118720080826
at the end of 2007 it was:

Oracle:  48.6%
IBM:  20.7%
Microsoft:  18.1%

That puts everybody else combined at less than 16%, so at best Oracle
could finally reach a majority of sales here, far from a monopoly.  Looks
like MySQL yearly sales are expected to be in the $75-$120M range for 2009
(based on 2008 figures and an excellent fiscal Q1), which gives them a
4-7% market share.  They're somewhat evasive about that on their site, the
MySQL provided figures I saw were talking about market share among
open-source OS deployments instead.

--
* Greg Smith gsmith@gregsmith.com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD