"Linux went from 1.25 percent in May of 2007 to 2.02 percent in March of 2008. That is 61.6 percent increase in market share in nine months."

We know Linux has enough potential to be a consumer desktop and we also know that Linux has less than 2% of desktop market share. Let's admit the truth. Linux enthusiasts may site a thousand reasons on why Linux does not sit on consumer desktops, or conversely why people are not ready to Linux even after Linux is absolutely ready.

According to the latest statistics from w3counter.com, Firefox's market share is going gangbusters with the open source browser capturing over 25 percent of the browser market.

In the North American market for POS (point of sales/service) terminals, Linux grew 32 percent year-over-year, according to figures released by IHL Group. The research firm reckons Linux accounted for $475 million of the $5.56 billion market, putting it third overall with an 8.5 percent market share.

IDC is reporting that Windows server growth hit 6.9 percent in Q4 2007, bringing it to 36.6 percent market share. Linux trounced Windows' growth at 11.6 percent to hit 12.7 percent market share. Microsoft owns the market, but Linux owns the future.

One thing many of us would like to know, I am sure, is how many people out there use Linux? The usual numbers, those from Net Applications, would indicate that less than 1% of people use Linux. More recently, though, there have been some more optimistic numbers.

Although China's Linux market as a whole doubled from 2003 to 2006 to $20 million per year, sales of Linux desktop software grew more slowly. In fact, the market share of Linux desktop software in China dropped from 16% to 12% in the same period. But according to CCID Consulting, sales of Linux desktop software increased 25.1% in the third quarter of this year, catching up with the quick growth of China's Linux industry as a whole. Several new developments have added fuel to the growth.

According to a recent IDC report highlighted by ZDNet, Linux is booming. At just 9.4 percent of the overall server market in terms of revenue in 2007, Linux has now climbed to 13.4 percent of the overall server market, with Unix at 7.7 percent and Windows at 36.5 percent.

Linux represents 15 percent of the smartphone market, but that figure should grow considerably, says a market research report. The study, from Strategy Analytics, found that Motorola will continue to drive the growth for mobile Linux, along with Google.