NetBeans Usage Statistics Will Surprise You

The NetBeans IDE "phones home" weekly to check for updates. Sun captures statistics to determine the number of active users and where they are coming from. Below are statistics for the top twenty countries over the past twelve months regardless of product version:

#   Country        Count    Ratio
1.  United States  373,252  16.1%
2.  Brazil         204,470  8.8%
3.  India          142,460  6.1%
4.  Germany        120,482  5.2%
5.  China          117,489  5.1%
6.  Mexico          88,320  3.8%
7.  United Kingdom  79,847  3.4%
8.  Spain           78,408  3.4%
9.  Italy           65,798  2.8%
10. France          59,191  2.5% 
11. Poland          57,076  2.5%
12. Canada          49,666  2.1%
13. Colombia        42,970  1.8%
14. Japan           40,883  1.8%
15. Peru            37,230  1.6%
16. Czech Republic  32,763  1.4%
17. Russian Federation  29,765    1.3%
18. Australia       27,992  1.2%
19. Thailand        27,975  1.2%
20. Netherlands     24,551  1.1%

(source: NetBeans DreamTeam mailing list Sep 9 2008)

I remember Sun proudly announcing that there are over 300,000 active NetBeans users at JavaOne 2007. Since then versions 6.0 and 6.1 were released, and obviously the user base has grown significantly. I recently discovered that a senior developer I know who works for a major bank is using NetBeans 6.1. He is a recent Eclipse convert and really really loves NetBeans.

It's time for all of you commercial and open source plugin developers to target the massive and ever expanding NetBeans IDE user base. Sometimes I find a great IDE plugin that is only available for Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA. There is a market for NetBeans plugins.

I see Canada has quite a few NetBeans users. If you are in the Toronto or GTA area and use NetBeans I'd love to hear from you!

From http://www.ryandelaplante.com/