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Microsoft Boasts 96% Netbook Penetration
An anonymous reader writes "Citing figures from market research firm NPD, Microsoft says Windows' share of the US netbook market has ballooned from less than 10% in the first half of 2008 to 96% as of February. 'The growth of Windows on netbook PCs over the last year has been phenomenal,' wrote Brandon LeBlanc, Microsoft's in-house Windows blogger, in a post Friday. Information Week author Paul McDougall notes Microsoft's 8% decline in Windows sales is due to netbooks sporting Linux. How does Redmond make an 80% gain in netbook market share without the sales numbers reflecting that gain?"
For a short while people were willing to forgo Windows for the form factor and price of a netbook. Then Moore's law ticked over and Microsoft was able to enter that market - same price for the machine but with the specs that XP needs. Next iteration they'll be selling units with Vista on them. The only way to keep Microsoft out is to race to the bottom and there's no economic incentive for the hardware manufacturers to do that.
How we know is more important than what we know.
How does Redmond make an 80% gain in netbook market share without the sales numbers reflecting that gain?
That's easy, netbooks aren't sold in a comparable quantity, so a staggering increase of 80% reflects a tiny shift in the overall license count. Got any other braindead statistics questions for me?
I wonder if they count my shiny new Acer Aspire One? Yeah, it came with XP, and yeah, XP is still on the hard drive, but I installed Linux on the first day, and have spent about 1% of my time in Windows since then. I would call that a Linux computer, but I suppose they call it a Windows computer.
This goes against the prevailing wisdom here, but Linux is not necessarily the best OS for netbooks.
The newest netbooks have about as much CPU power and memory as a notebook computer made 3 years ago. That's enough to run windows XP and older Microsoft applications such as office 2003.
And, Windows has the overwhelming advantage it always did : it has an enormous existing software library that still dwarfs that of Linux. An operating system is an enormously powerful natural monopoly. It's time to admit that the only way Linux or MacOS could ever pull ahead and have the diversity of software Windows has is if Microsoft royally screws up over a period of years. Windows ME didn't even scratch Microsoft's monopoly, because everyone kept using Win98, and it appears that Vista is the same way.
Finally, I've heard many complain that the netbook manufacturers don't properly choose a good Linux distro and configure it with all the software a user is likely to ever need. If the manufacturers did that, pre-installing open office and VLC media player and firefox and the rest, and tuned the distro behind the scenes to run blazing fast on a flash disk, then Linux might have stayed a viable option.
I would assume Microsoft has also adapated to this market : they must be offering a substantial discount on the software license for a netbook. Wouldn't surprise me if they were selling "XP for netbook use" for $20 a license. It could very well be that it is cheaper to pay Microsoft than it is to pay the technical support costs for Linux.
Let's not forget that Microsoft had to be dragged kicking and screaming into this market.
You're doing the same thing by making up your own definition which excludes XP.
The fact that once XP is included in the definition the number of netbooks with XP on them vs Linux on them kind of implies that XP has some bearing on what people want on their netbooks.
> If you can do that with WinCE as well as Linux, then what difference does it make?
First off, Linux has a full software stack. A real working Firefox with most of the expected plugins, OO.o, etc. WinCE has what exactly? To date it, and the apps written for it, have mostly been geared around PDAs and smart phones, usually with a touch screen.
WinCE isn't Windows. The main advantage Windows has for the average customer is the known quantity. It's Windows, just like on the other machines they interact with at home, school, work, friends, etc. The same programs run, etc. WinCE has none of those advantages, in fact the association with Windows will only confuse as it will lead the clueless to think it IS Windows and then be disillusioned when it is discovered to be something completely different.
WinCE will raise the per unit cost of the machine though, and if it isn't to cut too deeply into Microsoft's profits it is going to have to cost a lot to keep the monopoly rents flowing in. Meanwhile the pengin is still Free except for the ARM port of the Flash plugin.
Democrat delenda est
Last week I walked into no fewer than 20 different computer stores here in Taiwan (the home of ASUS, Acer, MSI, etc), big and small, in order to buy a Linux netbook. But despite the fact that some of them displayed as many as 20 different brands and models, I found exactly 0 (zero!) netbooks shipping with Linux. Zero, nada, nothing! It just doesn't exist any more.
So yes, I believe Microsoft and its 96% figure. While people had choice between Linux and Windows, the figure was very different, but since the consumers are no longer offered a Linux option, even 96% seems low. The situation with netbooks is now exactly the same as with laptops - it's 2009 and it's still impossible to buy one without Windows pre-installed!
I always have to laugh when I read news about EU suing Microsoft for bundling a browser or a media player with Windows, but fails to see the real issue - Microsoft's complete stronghold over hardware manufacturers. ASUS, Acer, MSI, Dell, HP - they all "recommend Windows for everyday computing" on their web sites. Out of their free will, no doubt...
That made me sad. Alphas were good chips.
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
I maintain that a netbook running Windows, or even a standard Linux build, isn't really a netbook. It's really just a small, underpowered laptop.
... all of the things that you didn't really want to drag out a PC to do, but didn't really want to cram onto a phone either ... and with a snappy operating system that boots up quickly and gets the job done without calling attention to itself. If you have to run Windows Update on your netbook to protect it from the worm-of-the-week ... you've totally missed the point.
The whole point of netbooks was supposed to be that they *weren't* PC's, they were consumer electronics devices. Quickie access to the Internet, a little photo sharing and music playing
I'm more interested in the next generation of netbooks -- the ones that will cost $150-200 and run for eight or nine hours on one battery charge -- running low-power ARM and a designed for small form factor OS like Android. That generation of hardware will prove that a netbook isn't supposed to act like a PC. (And even if Microsoft weasels its way into that market by building Windows for ARM, they'll still find themselves at a disadvantage because x86 Windows software won't run on it. In fact, they'll even be faced with an unprecedented rate of customers returning them for just that reason.)
Let PC's be PC's and let netbooks be netbooks. They're not the same thing.
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I got one of them fancy Samsung NC10 netbooks (Atom 1.6GHz, gig RAM, XP pre-installed).
My OS of choice?
Mozilla Firefox.
At least that's where I spend 99% of my time on it.
Aside from the fact that MS probably counts shipped units to come up with its "96%" claim, does it really matter whether Linux geeks or Microsoft (or both) claim me as a user? The underlying OS identity is about as relevant to me as the manufacturer of the 2.5" hard drive the unit comes with. I stuck with XP since it was the path of least resistance.
Discuss...
I went off-track too, but a little differently.
The first thing I thought was "In related news, Malware Writers Boast 96% Netbook Penetration".
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.