The Story
Some days it's frustrating to be a .NET developer. You're eating lunch with your software team, pizza for the third time this week, and suddenly everyone starts brainstorming a useful little utility that fills a niche in the software world.
"We can market it via the Internet," you say excitedly.
"Yeah. We could let potential users download a trial version of the software." says your marketing guy.
"Wait a minute." says Ted. "Our potential clients need to have the .NET framework installed. " Ted is one of your testers. He's always thinking of things that can go wrong.
"How many computers have the .Net framework installed?" everyone shouts at once. Sadly, nobody knows.
.NET Momentum
How many computer currently have the .Net framework installed?
Soma Somasegar, Vice President of the Developer Division at Microsoft has some statistics about .NET rollout. I find these figures very encouraging.
- Approximately 5.5 million downloads per month via Windows Update
- 70 million desktops with .NET (as of June 2004)
- 54 million new computers shipped in 2004 - most will have .NET as part of the OS.
- 2.5 million developer writing .NET apps
If this growth continues through the end of 2004 there could be ~120 million potential customers for .NET applications. That's a nice big number. Companies that have been hesitating to switch their product to .NET now have a much larger customer pool to work with. If your company offers trial version of a product it might be time to re-evaluate building .Net versions of your software.