Why the Netbook Opens the Door to Linux
The Netbook is transforming the Windows PC market in a dramatic way. While PC sales are collapsing – figures suggest that the PC market has simply shrunk by about 20% – Netbook sales have been buoyant and are even growing in these dismal times. Sales grew in the last quarter of 2008 and projections suggest that sales may grow 50% in 2009. Some commentators are bundling Netbook sales in with laptop sales in the hope of convincing someone that laptop sales are not plunging. But they’re just whistling in the dark. The Netbook is not a laptop.
The question is who’s buying Netbooks and why?
The Netbook Market
The Netbook can currently be described as a dirt cheap low-life laptop. What do I mean by that? I mean that these devices are horribly underpowered. They’re OK for simple apps like word processing, spreadsheet, email and browsing. They suck mightily for serious graphics ang games. Most Apps from Adobe, for example, crawl like a comatose snail on a Netbook. Only old versions of Windows run on Netbooks.
It’s been a long time since any vendor tried to introduce a dirt-cheap low-life PC even though there is an obvious market for such devices (not just for Netbooks but also dirt cheap low-life desktop PCs.) Here’s a rough outline of that market:
- People who really cannot afford a PC.
- People who want to buy a very cheap PC for their kids.
- People who think laptops weigh too much and will be content with a very basic PC.
- People who only want a very basic PC anyway (no graphics, no games).
Or you could simply observe that if you reduce the price point in any market and only marginally reduce the capability of the entry level product, you will see new buyers appear. The market for very low cost PCs was initially opened up by Nicholas Negraponte’s vision of the $100 PC. That was the moment that the cat escaped from the bag.
The Netbooks that currently exist may be dirt cheap low-life laptops, but in time we’ll surely see even cheaper lower-life laptops, especially given that in India with they’re shooting for a $10 laptop.
The Netbook is not the Cavalry Coming to Microsoft’s Rescue
Unfortunately for Microsoft and the PC vendors, the Netbook offers the thinnest of profits to its vendors. That’s why Steve Jobs proclaimed that Apple couldn’t produce an acceptable product at the less-than-$500 price point. And it’s also why there was a 12% dip in Windows revenues in the last quarter of 2008. And even so, 25% or so of the Netbook market is currently Linux.
This is a nightmare for Microsoft. Thus far there has been no large population of desktop Linux users on which a thriving software market could develop. If one suddenly sprouts up on Netbooks, then Microsoft will be caught in a pincer movement between Apple’s OS X and Linux. Right now there are about 20 -30 million OS X users, but just a few million Linux desktop users. The number of Linux users is now growing, courtesy of the Netbook.
Microsoft’s problems stem from two sources. First Vista really was a disastrous release and it doesn’t appear to be possible to run it on a poorly powered Netbook. It looks as though a seriously trimmed version of Windows 7 will run on Netbooks, but Microsoft seems to be talking crazy. It is suggesting that the average Netbook user only runs 3 applications at a time and that it will limit the user to 3 applications. That’s the tyranny of averages. Just satisfy the average user and you’ll seriously annoy 20 percent of users for sure.
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Robin,
I both agree and disagree. The Netbook does open the door to Linux, and at the same time it doesn’t. Judging from a few recent (local) examples (a) sales staff don’t know how to deal with an enquiry for Linux on a netbook even if they are selling it on that shelf over there; (b) many of the demographic for netbooks are “afraid” of Linux.
The latter is up to the Linux community to address. It is great to create open source software and Linux runs well BUT for people who are bred on Windows with all its imperfections and vicissitudes they know what they are doing on Windows and what is available to them to use. It is heavily marketed.
Linux presumes too much. Ubuntu is a step on the right direction, but it still lacks in vital areas such as support (I don’t mean mainstream packages like Open Office). The Linux community as a whole has a job of marketing to do before it opens up the opportunity offered by the netbook.
I’ll be honest, I bought one for my someone a few weeks/months back. It came with XP and lots of trial licences. The best thing that Microsoft did for Linux was the trial licence. On discovering that there was still $xxx to pay over and above the cost of the netbook, the trial copies went out the window and were rapidy replaced by OpenOffice, Thunderbird, Mozilla and the rest.
There is another point. I looked at several brands when buying and one thing that was clear was that build quality is often on the low-side of poor, keyboards in particular are not brilliant for anything other than trivial use and for much day-to-day use screens are too small. There is a real risk for Linux by association. If Linux were to become de facto on netbooks it risks being seen as the downmarket option. That is not where it wants to be.
I am not sure about the market outline that you posit for the netbook. It is a bit of all that you say, but primarily it is a cheap, ubiquitous alternative to the laptop. It is selling well into the young, mobile-aware sector and netbooks are getting so cheap that you can walk into most mobile phone stores here and pick up a netbook in return for a two-year mobile line-rental contract.
Linux has an opportunity whether it will make it really remains to be seen
Hi,
“The old Linux plus Open. Office idea is just an equivalent to Windows in the platform sense but with different piece parts.”
I agree but that is what 99% of users want. The real issue is making sure that the end user is aware that this is a good starting point…and that there is a lot more that they can access and they need to understand how to get to it.This is the marketing issue.
I think that most people would regard Intel’s Atom as a decent chip!
Peter
Peter, This is an interesting topic. There are multiple dynamics at work here. From one perspective Linux isn’t really the issue. The fact is that with software like Mozilla Prism and Adobe Air (the apps are now flowing) an ecosystem of apps that are network centric is rising up. That’s why ASUS is thinking of Android as an OS. (Android is the Linux Kernel plus Java, as I’m sure you know.) The old Linux plus Open Office idea is just an equivalent to Windows in the platform sense but with different piece parts. The Netbook that really is a Net Book is an interesting concept – because that is not really a PC and anyway who cares what the OS is. The Browser + the JVM is the OS.
The next generation on Netbooks will probably have decent chips and be more coherent as products – and maybe they’ll even have decent keyboards.