Windows, Linux, MacOS, Node, NPM

Growth - but at a lower pace

Article 11-01-18 ~2 minutes read · 384 words

Node is still gaining ground among IT developers around the world, but the conquest has slowed down. This is documented in the newly released Node-by-Numbers report for 2017 from NodeSource.

While in 2016 node was downloaded 85 million times 1 more than the previous year, the increase in 2017 dropped to 81 million on a yearly basis. Calculated in percentages, the rate of increase has been halved.

Node (by some referred to as Node.js and NodeJS) is also being downloaded on more computers than ever before, when downloads are measured in bytes. Viewed from that angle, 2017 has seen a higher rate of increase compared to the previous year - but only in numbers, not in percentages.

Year 2015 1 2016 1 2017 1
Downloads 91,932,773 177,188,140 257,997,686
Growth 85,255,367 (93 %) 80,809,546 (49 %)
Terabytes 893.262 1,309.746 1,819.762
Growth 416.484 (47 %) 510.016 (39 %)
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Linux underlines its supremacy

The report also shows that Linux continues to expand its dominance within the Node world. By 2015, 57 per cent of the Node packages ended on a Linux machine. The share has now risen to over 34. Alle of the growth has been at the expense of Windows, which has fallen from a share of more than 13 to now approx. 15. MacOS appears to maintain a somewhat unchanged share in third place.

Year 2015 2016 2017
Linux 57 % 23 >34
Windows 36 % 14 15
MacOS 7 %
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Boom in Russia

More than half the node downloads traditionally end up in the United States, making this country absolutely dominante in this area. Then Europe follows, and China comes in third.

The report focuses on the so-called BRIC countries and other countries, which in recent years have attracted an increasing share of world economics. Russia delivers the main shift in this field - delivering a tripling in node downloads from 2016 to 2017. Thus, the big country took a big jump past both India and Brazil in the list of the world’s largest node countries.

Year 2015 2016 2017
China 7,214,965 10,297,364 11,971,018
Russia 757,253 1,299,697 4,473,551
India 1,693,750 2,637,543 3,828,299
Brazil 647,316 1,367,484 1,602,735
Vietnam 476,830 1,197,968
Indonesia 878,193
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  1. Downloads of binary installers and source, header and binary travels from node.js.org.