Windows you done stole my netbook market away: Linux

Stan Beer
Sunday, 14 December 2008 13:21

Opinion and Analysis

For a brief moment in time, between October 2007 and April 2008, thanks to the Asus Eee PC it really did seem as if desktop Linux was finally going to have its moment in the sun. Unfortunately for the Linux crowd, however, Asus, Acer and other hardware makers realised they could sell many more netbooks if they did deals with those nasty folks in Redmond.

According to recent estimates, we can expect one of various distributions of Linux to be the operating system on about 30% of netbooks by the end of 2008 (Windows XP on the other 70%). While that news may cause the hearts of Linux lovers to flutter with excitement, on close examination this is really nothing for them to crow about.

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