UPDATED: Turbolinux is enjoying its fourth consecutive year of growth in the China Linux market, after a report issued by IDC this week said its share saw significant growth in 2004.
The report, “China Linux 2005-2009 Forecast and Analysis,” said Turbolinux reached 62 percent in 2004, up from 61.1 percent the year before. The market share gain is actually being outpaced by Turbolinux’s server revenue growth which IDC reported as having grown by 24.6 percent in 2004.
“It should be noted, however, that Turbolinux’ claims are all based on revenues (the bulk of their revenues come from the server operating environment market),” an IDC spokesperson told internetnews.com. “If one looks at shipments, Red Flag would be considered the industry leader based on its strength in the market for client operating environments.”
On the desktop side of things, Turbolinux does not dominate and held a 2004 market share of 24.9 percent up from 22.1 percent in 2003. Desktop revenues were also said to be up by 22.9 percent in 2004 over the previous year.
One of Turbolinux’s key 2004 wins was a deal with China’s Ministry of Railways to install and deploy its high availability Turbo HA server application. At the time Turbolinux claimed that the system would “process 95 percent of total freight volume [and] nearly 200 million parcels annually.”
“We are extremely pleased that the advantages of Linux are being increasingly recognized and applied in many industries,” Claude Zhou, the general manager of Turbolinux China, said in a statement. “Turbolinux will continue to realize its commitment to drive the development of Linux systems and cultivate IT construction enterprises in China.”
Linux competition across Asia heated up significantly in 2004 with the introduction of the Asianux effort led by Turbolinux competitors Red Flag and Miracle Linux and backed by Oracle.
This year, the community-driven Debian Linux distribution’s aspirations in China also got a boost thanks to a pair of Asian vendors.
China-based Sun Wah Linux and Japan-based VA Linux Systems launched an effort to jointly develop and promote Debian for Asian markets.