Stan Beer
Wednesday, 29 April 2009 11:51
Business IT -
Technology
Page 2 of 3
Well, Asus' boss has said that
30% of its Eee PC netbooks sold were Linux machines but that was six
months ago. If someone has a more current quote, I'll be happy to
concede that this still may be the case.
Likewise, I'll concede that Jay Pinkert did indeed say sometime in
February that one in three of Dell's Inspiron Mini 9 netbooks sold was
shipped with Linux. It should be interesting to see how much market
share the Dell netbook has gained in recent months when new figures
come out.
In the meantime, here are some of the latest reports to emerge concerning the netbook space.
US
retail market tracker NPD in March
reported that during the December to
February quarter 96% of netbook sales in the US were Windows units!
Microsoft blogger Brandon LeBlanc had a ball
publicly crowing about
that report.
To
be fair, the results were probably skewed somewhat if taken in a global
context. As some bloggers quite rightly pointed out, the figures only
reflect the US market where Windows is particularly strong and they
only include physical store sales, neglecting online purchases.
However,
even in Europe, where Linux is popular and anti-Microsoft sentiment is
high,
evidence is emerging that Linux netbook sales
are slipping, a fact that even some
Linux advocates
concede.
This in part is what an article on Desktop Linux had to say:
"Despite the limitations of the NPD report, other anecdotal evidence, as
well as a new study by Ovum, appears to suggest a slippage in Linux
netbook market share."
And:
"If nothing else, the fact that leading netbook vendors, such as Asus
and Acer have recently been announcing high-end netbook models without
Linux installs, at least in the US, would suggest that the Windows
shift is real."
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