Desktop Linux great white hope hits the canvas

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 29 April 2009 10:51

Business IT - Technology

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.