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Our Blogs The BeerFiles Asus Eee PC - breakthrough Linux product faces threat
Our Blogs The BeerFiles Asus Eee PC - breakthrough Linux product faces threat | Asus Eee PC - breakthrough Linux product faces threat |
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| by Stan Beer | |
| Friday, 23 November 2007 | |
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Page 2 of 2 The product widely credited for Apple's resurgence as a force in theworld of consumer technology is the iPod. There are an estimated 120million of them sold into the market to date and they are selling at arate approaching 40 million a year. The software that goes hand-in-handwith and is virtual indispensable to the iPod is iTunes and itsassociated online store. Featured Whitepaper
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All of the better iTunes substitutes on Linux are capable to somedegree of recognizing and interfacing with an iPod. However, none ofthem can be expected to provide the seamless integration of iTunesitself. Most importantly, however, there is no application on Linux that willenable a user to access and buy products from the iTunes online store.Attempts to run iTunes on Linux using the Wine application layer havereportedly met with mediocre results at best. So unless Apple changesits policy, iTunes is not an option for the current Linux version ofthe Eee PC. Of course, there are many Eee PC users and prospective who don't give atoss about iTunes and many who will just use their desktop for iTunespurposes. However, given that a large segment of the target audiencefor this product will be young people and iPod owners, when faced witha choice between a Windows version that can run iTunes and a Linuxversion that can't....well. Asus is not a philanthropic organization - it is a hardware companyoperating in a cut-throat market with paper thin margins. Asus claimsthat it will sell 350,000 Linux Eee PCs by the end of the year. It alsoclaims that it will bring out a Windows version of the computer by theend of the year. It also claims that it will sell 3-5 million Eee PCunits by the end of 2008. What Asus doesn't make clear, however, is what proportion of the Eee PCunits in its 3-5 million sales projection for 2008 will be Linux boxes.Clearly, Asus knows which side its bread is buttered on or else itwouldn't even bother to bring a Windows version of its product tomarket. The Eee PC goes on sale in Australia in a week or two. These are thefirst Linux boxes targeting consumers in a big way and from the buzz inthe market they should sell well over the Christmas shopping period. It will be interesting to see what happens when the Windows version ofthe Asus Eee PC hits the market. Will it increase sales of Eee PCfurther or will it merely cannabilize Linux sales? |
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