Microsoft sees piracy as biggest competitor for Windows

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer talked about rivals to the software giant's Windows operating system in a webcast to investors this week, and explained Microsoft sees piracy as its biggest rival. When you see the chart below it's not hard to understand why, pirated copies of Windows have more than double the marketshare of all other operating systems combined.

Ballmer also stated Microsoft sees Linux as a bigger threat than Apple's Mac. More details at OS News.

Much more interesting is Microsoft's idea of Linux and Apple, According to Microsoft, Linux is a bigger threat to the company than Apple, placing Linux above Apple in the marketshare figure pie chart thing. "Linux, you could see on the slide, and Apple has certainly increased its share somewhat," Ballmer said. He went on to explain how the company views Apple:

I think depending on how you look at it, Apple has probably increased its market share over the last year or so by a point or more. And a point of market share on a number that's about 300 million is interesting. It's an interesting amount of market share, while not necessarily being as dramatic as people would think, but we're very focused in on both Apple as a competitor, and Linux as a competitor.