Linux netbook share to fall to 10% in 2009
Down from 70 per cent last year
After yesterday's claim that Linux is losing out to Windows XP as the netbook operating system of choice, here come some numbers - from a separate source - that show the shift more clearly.
According to an unnamed Taiwanese market watcher cited by Chinese-language newspaper the Economic Daily News - all by way of local newssite DigiTimes - only ten per cent of netbooks sold worldwide this year will come with Linux pre-installed.
That's down from a commanding 70 per cent share in 2008, the researcher is reported to have said.
Last year, some 11.21m netbooks shipped around the globe, which means Linux was pre-loaded on 7.84m of them.
If the researcher's forecast is correct, the open source OS will come on 2.32m netbooks out of the 23.2m that will ship worldwide this year, according to said researcher.
Still rather a lot of netbooks, we'd say, but still less than a third of the number of Linux SCCs sold in 2008.
Yesterday, UK market watcher Ovum said that Linux's role in the netbook arena will be ultimately limited to cheaper devices that are more appliance than personal computer. Which is, of course, what netbooks were originally about. Instead, they've been purchased as small laptops, to be used alongside or instead of a main PC, and that, Ovum suggested, is favouring Windows.
That trend can be clearly seen in the increasing appearance of netbooks with Windows but no Linux option - or at least in models that aren't readily available. ®
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COMMENTS
MS mafia
As stated by otheres here, products not available can't be bought. Last year it was fairly easy to buy a Linux netbook everywhere, now it has become quite hard to find one and I wouldn't be surprised at all, if that's because MS has put considerable pressure on the manufacturers to 'phase out' Linux in favour of XP.
This shows again that MS dominance of the desktop is only based on the mafia-style methods of MS, in a free market MS would probably be bust by now.
No wonder
Linux could be wonderful on netbooks but based on my fathers experience with sled 10 and the ones I've seen in shops, with firefox 2. something, they've really been badly put together. No wonder their must have been a lot of returns on these.
I read another article today....
Another article elsewhere on the Linux vs Windows topic quoted a report suggesting Linux would be taken on by much more people over the next year or 2 as the financial situation starts to make people cut spending.
I also tend to agree with the first comment... Products that aren't available for sale can't be counted. Thus the statistics are skewed.
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