johneklund-ga:
Thank you for your interesting question regarding business PCs in
Corporate America, and the percentage that meet your specifications.
Interestingly enough, finding this information in a publicly
accessible format (ie. not requiring a subscription to a research
service) is not as simple as it should be. In order to provide you
with an Answer where you can repeat the methodology in the future
should the need arise, I will instead use a deductive approach.
First, allow me to refer you to a paper published in 1999, on the
topic of data loss for business PCs in America:
"The Cost of Lost Data", by David M. Smith PhD, Sept. 1999
http://www.lht.com/Products/TapeBackup/Software/LostDataCosts/cost.doc
The author used research data provided by IDC to determine that the
number of PCs in use by businesses in North America equaled 78 M in
1998.
The typical business PC has a life cycle of between three to five
years, something that was verified by The Gartner Group in September
2003 as part of their research into the growing trend for businesses
to try to squeeze more than 3 years' life out of their PCs:
http://www3.gartner.com/5_about/press_releases/pr15sept2003b.jsp
For the purposes of this analysis, we can take a pessimistic view and
assume that businesses are on a 5-yr replacement cycle. So, for the
base of 78 M in 1998, approximately 19 M will be removed from business
service per year from 1999 through 2003.
If you refer to some additional IDC research results, you can see how
many PCs are added to the American business market in each year since
1999:
1999-2000
http://www.idctracker.com/newtracker/Pressreleases/september32001.htm
2000-2002
http://www.idctracker.com/newtracker/Pressreleases/pr12102003.pdf
The reason why 1999 is am important year to use for this analysis is
because the Pentium III was released in the second quarter of that
year. By 2000, business class PCs were almost exclusively Pentium III
based. As well, Windows 95 was phased out for shipment with new PCs
following the launch of Windows 98 in mid-1998. If we again take the
pessimistic view, we can assume that any business PC sold as of 2000
meets your minimum requirements for the processor and the operating
system.
The harder specifications to gauge will be the minimum memory of 128
MB, and the requirement for 16-bit color display. It is reasonable to
assume that the majority of business PCs are used for word processing
and spreadsheets. If we look at Microsoft's minimum recommended system
for Office 2000, we see that a Windows 98 machine would have been OK
with only 64 MB of RAM. With Windows NT or 2000, that minimum
threshold would exceed 64 MB, making 128 MB the likely next level.
Unfortunately, as memory can easily be added after a PC has been sold,
there is no easy way to determine this part of the specification to
any higher level of precision. The 16-bit color requirement is also
difficult to measure; the minimum requirement for Office 2000 was a
VGA display, with a SVGA display recommended. While the majority of
SVGA (800x600) display adapters were capable of 16-bit display, there
is no way to guarantee this. Regardless, the video drivers for
operating systems starting from Windows 98 and later are all capable
of mapping higher color-depth requirements down to a 256 color display
if necessary.
Office 2000 System Requirements:
http://www.microsoft.com/Office/previous/2000/sysreq2000.asp
Another requirement that you asked about, is the requirement for a
CD-ROM drive. With Windows 98 providing native support for CD-ROM
drives, it is safe to assume that business PCs shipped as of 2000 are
equipped with one. Furthermore, Windows 2000 and XP are only available
on CD to begin with.
So, if we take all of these assumptions and data, along with the
assumption of a five-year life cycle, here is what the total number
PCs would be for each year since 1998, and the percentage that would
be new as of 2000:
American Business PCs In Use
----------------------------
Year 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
New Add (M) 28 33 31 31 33
Total PCs (M) 78 87 101 112 124 137
New as of 2000 - - 33% 57% 77% 93%
Based on this approach, even if we throw in a margin of error of 10%
(of total PCs), we have at least 83% of business PCs in America being
likely to work with your multimedia PC. In an absolute worst-case
scenario, where no PCs have actually been removed from service, we
would still be looking at 54% being new as of 2000. This worst-case
scenario is highly unlikely, but helps to define that you would still
have at least a 1-in-2 chance that any PC in the business market can
work with your multimedia CD, with an upside of 93%.
I hope that you agree with the approach and method used here to come
up with the percentage of business PCs in America that should be able
to run your multimedia CD-ROM. Please let me know if you wish any part
of this clarified.
----------------------------
Search Strategy:
business PC life cycle
://www.google.com/search?q=business+PC+life+cycle
"pentium III" release
://www.google.com/search?q=%22pentium+III%22+release+
microsoft "windows 98" launch
://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+%22windows+98%22+launch
----------------------------
Regards,
aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher |
