The eye-catching piece of news this morning is that netbooks preloaded with Windows are outselling, sorry killing, those with Linux. That’s according to Asus (and later on by Acer and Toshiba: 90% of netbooks sold use Windows XP say Acer & Toshiba). See: Asus confirms Linux netbooks market decline
My reaction to this is that it’s pretty normal given the fact that early netbooks were only used by so called geeks who were comfortable with complex Linux as opposed to friendlier Linux OS à la Ubuntu Remix. The mainstream tried its teeth at Linux and failed returning the netbooks en masse. Another good reason is simply that most users are familiar with Windows anyway so naturally, they will gravitate towards it. After all, when laptops became the rage, Linux did not take over then either.
But with the rise of cloud operating systems, Windows should enjoy the top spot while it lasts because ultimetly, netbooks will run on something completely new and different.
For fun, read a prediction that now seems improbable: Will Netbooks Destroy Microsoft in 2009? or better yet 100 Million Netbooks to Be Sold in 2009?
{ 3 trackbacks }
{ 0 comments… add one now }