Maybe I am a little late to this topic but the Audio Skills website ran a poll regarding DAW popularity and Sonar ranked #9 overall. I was surprised how low they scored. Even more interesting was they didn't rank very high even on the Windows platform. So I have a couple questions. 1. What do you think about this? 2. Where does Sonar rank overall? They could have had a small sample which could have skewed the results. Has there been a larger poll taken somewhere? I guess I always thought Sonar was one of the highest ranked DAWS on Windows.

Look up "selection bias" or "sampling bias". Although often associated with medical testing, it's applicable to all types of polling and statistical analysis.

Hi.I think what also comes into play are who votes on these polls? Is it a true representation of the users in general?
I bet most people making music, didn't even know about this.
I could be wrong, though 
I voted for SONAR in that poll. Because I think it's the best DAW (for my use).
All the best.

Sonar has helped to pay for my house, two cars and a studio. That gets the #1 position in my opinion :O)

Looks like #9 overall, #4 for Windows only in user popularity. But the free Audacity is #1(I wouldn't consider it a DAW as it doesn't do multitrack recording).https://audioskills.com/data/daws/windows/

Sonar Platinum is #1.
 
The poll mentioned in the OP is obviously not asking the right people.
 

Who cares where if ranks in a non-scientific poll!  If you like Sonar then use it.  I like Sonar and couldn't give a rodent's rump what anyone else thinks.

A single website ran the survey for a week and got approx 1,200 responses primarily from the US - so it's a limited sample with an obvious bias to their readership (I'd not come accross them).  A more interesting question would be sales numbers in terms of DAWs sold and upgrades paid for.  If you want the answer, follow the money...

It has been a matter of speculation on this forum for years: How many customers are actually using SONAR? Or a variant: How many use SONAR relative to other DAW's. Of course that question is more or less unanswerable except by the difficult and expensive methodology of an unbiased survey. Many people own several DAW's and use only one, so without asking a random sample about their actual SONAR use, the question remains a mystery. As for a biased sample, nowhere will you find a sample as hideously unscientific as the contributions of the fanboys on this forum. Of course we regular visitors to this forum think SONAR is great.
 
A simpler question, and one that could be definitively answered easily (and an answer that is presumably already known with some certainty) is: How many licensed copies of SONAR are out there? So why is the answer to that question so difficult to find in any public space? Most companies are happy to publish their market penetration, unless it is either 1) likely to get them looked at too closely as a monopoly or 2) so low as to be an embarrassment that will further depress sales or company value.
 
Facebook does not keep its user base a trade secret, and GM will disseminate its sales to the media without undue hesitation even when it is embarrassing. But in spite of seeing this kind of speculation on this forum for years, I have never seen anyone (customer or employee of Cakewalk) answer this simple question. 

I would be interested in the number of licensed copies (including all releases and not just the current one).
 
My perception from articles, product compatibility, and other non-scientific methods, is that the most popular DAWs are (in no particular order) ProTools, Logic Pro, Cubase, and Sonar.  I exclude Ableton and Reason only because they are conceptually different products.
 
Logic Pro, which by all accounts is an excellent product, has a bit of an advantage in that Apple practically gives it away so people will buy Apple Hardware.  There is no other rational reason I know of for it's low price.
 
I don't like Pro Tools, I don't want to switch to Mac, and I don't know anything about Cubase (which has a steep learning curve), so the decision was easy for me.  Also, I've been on some version of Cakewalk since it was a simple MIDI sequencer running on Windows 3.1.