<p>I've been looking for this information for my commercial desktop product, with no avail.</p>

<p>Specifically, what I'm look for, is deployment statistics of the .NET framework for end-users (both granny "I'm just browsing the internet" XP, and high-end users, if possible), and in the commercial/business sector.</p>

<p>Edit: Other than the data points below, here's an interesting blog post about .NET <a href="http://www.nbdtech.com/blog/archive/2009/05/25/what-percentage-of-users-have-the-.net-framework-installed-and.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">deployment rates</a>.</p>

[{'answer_id': 65769, 'author': 'GEOCHET', 'author_id': 5640, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/5640', 'pm_score': 1, 'selected': False, 'text': "<p>I don't have any hard numbers, but these days, it is pretty safe to assume most Windows XP and Vista users have at least .NET 2.0. I believe this was actually dropped via Windows Update for XP, and Vista came with at least 2.0 (apparently with 3.0 as pointed out in the comments to this answer).</p>\n"}, {'answer_id': 65780, 'author': 'Vaibhav', 'author_id': 380, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/380', 'pm_score': 1, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>It depends a lot on which version of the framework you are targeting. I believe 1.1 (and even 2.0) are widely deployed. The later versions are not.</p>\n\n<p>You should also visit this site for some very good information on .Net Framework Deployment: <a href="http://www.hanselman.com/smallestdotnet/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.hanselman.com/smallestdotnet/</a></p>\n'}, {'answer_id': 65826, 'author': 'Eric Schoonover', 'author_id': 3957, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/3957', 'pm_score': 3, 'selected': True, 'text': '<p>Some statistics from 2005 I found at <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/scottwil/archive/2005/03/09/391199.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Scott Wiltamuth\'s blog</a> (you can be sure these numbers are much higher now):</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>More than 120M copies of the .NET Framework have been downloaded and installed using either Microsoft downloads or Windows Update</li>\n<li>More than 85% of new consumer PCs sold in 2004 had the .NET Framework installed</li>\n<li>More than 58% of business PCs have the .NET Framework preinstalled or preloaded</li>\n<li>Every new HP consumer imaging device (printer/scanner/camera) will install the .NET Framework if it’s not already there – that’s 3M units per year</li>\n<li>Every new Microsoft IntelliPoint mouse software CD ships with the .NET Framework</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>It is also worth pointing out that Vista and Windows Server 2008 both ship with the .NET Framework.  XP gets it via Windows Update.</p>\n'}, {'answer_id': 65906, 'author': 'Community', 'author_id': -1, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/-1', 'pm_score': 1, 'selected': False, 'text': "<p>I needed that same kind of information at my last job, where I was attempting to convince my manager to allow .NET development.  The customer base was primarily dial-up users, so requiring a 20+ MB download was a tough sell.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find any sort of statistics, either from Microsoft or from a research firm.</p>\n\n<p>What I was able to get, however, was web analytics from the company's home page.  .NET inserts its version number into the User Agent field, which I was able to log using our analytics package.  From there, some Excel gruntwork was able to give me a rough idea of how many customers already had .NET installed, and which version(s).</p>\n\n<p>Unfortunately that won't help you answer the broader question of deployment rates across multiple demographics, but it might be a useful technique for a single customer base.</p>\n"}]
['https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/65749', 'https://Stackoverflow.com', 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/9440/']