Windows you done stole my netbook market away: Linux

Stan Beer
Sunday, 14 December 2008 14:21

Opinion and Analysis

However, Asus the market maker is no longer the market leader. Acer, on the back of its phenomenally successful Aspire One, has taken over that mantle, selling a phenomenal 2.15 million netbooks in Q3 this year, compared to 1.7 million Eee PC units.

There is strong anecdotal evidence to suggest that even a 10% marketshare for Linux netbooks going forward may be wishful thinking on the part of Linux advocates. Looking at the best selling computers on the Amazon online store, 9 of the top ten selling computers at present are Windows XP netbooks, with the exception being the OLPC XO childrens laptop (ranked 5) currently selling under the give one get one program.

The highest ranked Linux netbook on the Amazon sales chart is an Acer Aspire One loaded with Linpus Linux Lite sitting at a lowly 25, with a plethora of Windows XP netbook models from Acer, Asus, MSI Wind and Samsung outselling it.

The problem with Linux netbooks is that most people buying them already have a computer running Windows. So when faced with the choice of buying a Windows netbook or a Linux netbook, users will naturally tend to go with what they know.

The above view is supported by the confirmation of high Linux netbook return rates from netbook suppliers. As outlined in this report, upon receiving a Linux netbook, new users quite often get thrown by the fact that it's different from what they're used to. They don't want to learn a new operating system if they don't have to so they return their new purchase.

Another issue is that netbooks running Linux are dogged by the same problems as Linux desktop and notebook computers.

It's all very well to say that you only want to use a netbook for web browsing, Internet telephony, listening to music and a bit of light wordprocessing. However, if you can't get your mobile broadband card to work properly because it doesn't support Linux, if you have to use a crippled primitive version of Skype, if you can't use iTunes, and if you're limited to using just one web browser instead of your browser of choice, then as a Windows user why change if you didn't have to?

Despite the fact that Asus boss Jerry Shen is a strong Linux advocate, it didn't take long for the company to realise that it would be business suicide not to bring a Windows Eee PC to market as soon as possible. In fact, if Asus hadn't released a Windows version of its netbook as quickly as it did it would probably find itself reduced to a bit player today.

Today, new netbooks from the big computer makers are appearing on the market seemingly nearly every week - all of them pre-loaded with Windows, some with Linux. Many of the major retail stores don't even bother to stock Linux netbooks any more.

For its part, Microsoft has once again like it or not demonstrated how difficult it is to dislodge Windows from its unique market position in the personal computing space.

Microsoft, which had been used to developing operating systems to use as much computing resources as possible, was caught with its bloated monstrosity Vista moving totally in the opposite direction to the netbook phenomenon. Despite this, Redmond was able to do a sharp 180 turn and within six months capture a dominant position in a new PC market segment.

The only way that Windows may fail to capture more than 90% of the netbook market next year is if Apple releases a particularly compelling Mac product - which could happen. As for Linux, it will be surprising if it manages to maintain more than a single digit share of the netbook market by the end of 2009 and we can expect to see that share dwindling further as time goes on.