Technology news and Jobs 
Our Blogs The BeerFiles Windows you done stole my netbook market away: Linux
Our Blogs The BeerFiles Windows you done stole my netbook market away: Linux | Windows you done stole my netbook market away: Linux |
|
| by Stan Beer | |
| Sunday, 14 December 2008 | |
|
Page 1 of 2   
Featured Whitepaper
5 Best Practices for Smartphone Support
While the Windows XP Eee PC 701 was offically released in January 2008, most of the world didn't get to see a Windows version of the now iconic netbook until around April. Until then, Linux netbooks had a full six months head start on Windows, with 1 million Linux netbooks sold in 2007 and say another 1.5 million sold in the first quarter of 2008 (a guesstimate on my part). That's 2.5 million Linux netbooks moved before Asus brought out the first Windows XP model. Since then, the netbook market has literally exploded. In Q3, more than 5.6 million netbooks were shipped worlwide and a total about 14 million are expected to be sold in 2008. So if we take the total number of netbooks sold into the market so far as 15 million, of which 30% (4.5 million) are Linux machines and 70% (10.5 million) are Windows, what conclusions can we draw? Since April this year when Windows netbooks first appeared, conservatively about 81% of all netbooks sold have been supplied pre-loaded with Windows XP. This appears to indicate that a more realistic assessment of the Linux netbook market share is something less than 20% and dwindling as the market gets swamped by Windows netbooks There are also reports stating that return rates of Linux netbooks are quite high - four times that of Windows netbooks - although Asus denies this is the case with the Eee PC range. CONTINUED Page 2 |
| < Next story in category | Previous story in the category > |
|---|
