Stan Beer
Wednesday, 29 April 2009 10:51
Business IT -
Technology
Page 3 of 3
Europe based
Ovum, which is probably one of
the better global research groups, believes that the ideal of a
Windows-like Linux distribution gaining critical mass is unfounded:
"Netbooks will not bring Linux to the masses to the extent and in the
way that many are expecting. Linux vendors need to focus on the netbook
as a sub-$200 appliance rather than an alternative to Windows netbooks
and laptops. Google's Android, rather than a generic Linux distribution
like Ubuntu, is likely to emerge as the main platform for this new type
of device."
So
if there has been a major shift back to Windows in the netbook space,
is there a reason? Yes, almost certainly, as NPD pointed out and
reported on
this site:
"As the NPD study reports, "nearly 50 percent of all netbook sales for
2008 occurred in December." In other words, because Linux was first to
the market, its early 25-30 percent share may have been illusory. With Microsoft
recently pushing Windows XP netbooks among hardware partners and
retailers, Linux share was bound to go down. Many of the me-too
netbooks of late 2008 came from vendors who never install Linux on
their computers."
To put the sealer on this argument, it is probably best to look at what
the top netbook vendors are actually doing rather than what they're
saying.
If you want to find a Linux netbook made by the two top notebook
vendors Acer and Asus, the chances are that it will only be a bottom of
the range entry level model. They're not even bothering to release
Linux versions of their higher end netbooks because they believe
there's no market for them.
Those are the facts. However, there is little doubt that until the
likes of an IDC, a Gartner or another research group finally gets it
together to release a report detailing global netbook sales broken down
by operating system we can only guess at exact market shares.
In the meantime, dewy-eyed Linux zealots are welcome to believe that
Linux continues to rule 30% of the netbook space despite overwhelming
evidence to the contrary.