Windows crushing Linux in netbook market: Acer

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 17 December 2008 15:03

IT Industry - Market

Again, like Toshiba, Dell has launched its new netbook in both Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux versions in the US but only the Windows XP model in Australia.

Evan Williams, Dell's Australia and New Zealand consumer sales and marketing general manager told iTWire that the company decided to release only a Windows XP version of its netbook in Australia after gauging customer demand in Australia and overseas.

"In Australia, when we evaluate what products we bring to the market, we've got a limited number of models we can bring in," said Williams.

"We chose what we thought was most popular based on what customers were telling us.

"We're evaluating it and we're particularly looking at the US response to their models. On the website that US customers buy from you can see the customers' feedback on the models. We can simply look at that feedback and evaluate what models we should bring out."

So what sort of feedback is the Australian office of Dell getting from the US?

"If you look at the number of models on the site, there's a small number of Linux models compared to the XP models. That probably tells you intuitively where the demand is at the moment," said Williams.

When asked for a comment about the growth of the netbook market for Asus, the company's spokesman for Australia Shawn Yen told iTWire that sales are steady but had no further comment. A request for additional comment was not forthcoming at the time of publishing.

UPDATE: Asus has since responded.

Most netbook makers are not prepared to write off the future of Linux netbooks for the mainstream consumer market just yet. However, it is telling that Linux netbooks are becoming harder to find in consumer retail stores.

One of Australia's largest retail chains Harvey Norman has given its verdict to iTWire about the way it views the state of play in the netbook market space.

"Windows is definitely the dominant platform in netbooks, currently the Asus Eee PC 701 is the only model Harvey Norman carry with Linux," said Rick Seymour, product manager computer hardware at Harvey Norman.

It is perhaps a worrying sign for the future of Linux in the consumer space that Seymour also said that the quantity of netbooks being sold at the store has been increasing steadily over the last few months and has had a real spike since mid November. Despite this ramp up, the only Linux model that this major retailer has seen fit to stock is the very first netbook to hit the market.