Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
In my opinion using web browsers, rather than separately installed applications, to achieve real work is quite significant. Web browsers run on every operating system. So, you can work using any operating system and any PC, just by logging in.
It doesn't take a great deal of computing power to run just a browser or a number of browser windows. The "netbook" revolution of the past twelve months is a testament to the fact that people don't really need, or are demanding, access to a hugely powerful desktop computer to get effective work done.
Chip manufacturers are taking advantage of the trend by releasing processors, such as Intel's Atom, which run more efficiently and cooler, specifically targeting this market. It is designed to run simple applications such as web browsers and not big fat applications such as Adobe Photoshop.
This is also the ideal function for Linux to fulfil. Personally, I think that the reason why Windows XP is still popular on "netbooks" is purely to do with familiarity of installing the applications that people use. For example, there'd be quite a few people installing Instant Messaging software.
As applications continue to move into the "cloud" we'll find that the arguments about it being difficult to install applications on Linux or it not being "user-friendly" become irrelevant. Essentially, the only application you'll need is a web browser.
The point of differentiation between hardware suppliers will be how well they can integrate the underlying operating system and make it "user-friendly", seamless or even appear not to be there at all. The operating system can take care of the Internet connection (using wired or wireless connections), and then you'll just see the web browser.
In fact, ASUS have already identified this trend as they embed "Splashtop" into their products. This allows you to select if you want to boot into your full operating system or a cut down (Linux based) version which only has a few available applications. It would be fascinating to see if this is being used and to what extent and if this increases over the next few years.
Linux is not going anywhere. In fact, I think that with the increasing trend towards "cloud computing" we are going to see more and more Linux in our everyday computer usage. What do you think? As always, please leave feedback, comments and questions. However, I will only respond to comments left on iTWire article discussion forums. The direct link for this article is here.
David Bass
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