Linux Owns 1/3 of the Netbook Marketshare
Lots of people use Linux. That’s known. But usually those people are computer science majors flipping major corporations the bird (before they sell out to said corporations after graduation), not consumers buying systems with Linux preloaded.
According to a new report by Jeff Orr, an analyst at ABI, Linux preinstalls represent 32% of the 35 million netbooks shipping this year (a number consistent with Dell’s own reports). And it makes sense. Pretty much an variation of Linux is lighter weight than Windows (even the improved performance of 7 over Vista is paid for in battery life). And in the lowest end of the hardware market, I’d bet consumers are a lot more cognizant of the impact an OS has on the final price of a computer. [Computer World via Slashdot and Awesome Image]
Linux owns 32 percent of netbook market, says study
ABI Research is projecting that in 2009 Linux will represent 32 percent of netbook sales, far higher than the seven percent figure claimed by Microsoft, says a report. ABI estimates that Linux will overtake Windows on netbooks by 2013, largely due to sales in less-developed countries.
In its most recent report based on its UMDs (Ultra-mobile Devices) study, which covers netbooks, MIDs, and UMPCs, ABI Research says that almost 35 million netbooks will be shipped by manufacturers in 2009. ABI did not publicly break out sales by specific segment or operating system, but a ComputerWorld story by Eric Lai quotes ABI analyst Jeff Orr as saying that the study shows that 32 percent (about 11 million netbooks) of this year’s netbook shipments will be used with a Linux-based operating system. Since Apple has yet to release a netbook, the remaining 68 percent belongs to Microsoft Windows, projects ABI.
As Lai points out, despite the two to one edge for Windows, this is a far cry from the 96 percent advantage Microsoft claimed to have enjoyed in April. Microsoft has now updated its projection by telling Lai that "over 93 percent of worldwide small notebook PCs run Windows today." This would suggest that even Microsoft agrees that Linux netbook sales have rebounded, at least slightly.
Dell’s Linux-ready Mini 10vAccording to the story, Orr says that while Windows enjoys a higher percentage of U.S. sales, the picture is different overseas. "Just because you live in the United States, don’t assume that everything is on Windows," Orr was quoted as saying. Non-U.S. consumers have less experience with Windows, and therefore don’t have to overcome the fear of switching to something new, Orr was said to have told Lai. According to ABI, the largest share of netbook sales belongs to the Asia-Pacific region, including Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.
Beyond that, Orr did not mention other Linux netbook trends except to say that "Ubuntu is a popular choice on netbooks." He did tell Lai, however, that going forward Moblin, Android, and Google’s Chrome OS will also lead the way on Linux netbook distributions.
Although Orr doesn’t note where these distros stack up for 2009, Android and Moblin are only just now appearing on netbooks, with Moblin being repackaged and combined with desktop brands like Ubuntu and OpenSUSE, so they are not likely to rate more than a blip in the 2009 numbers. Chrome OS, meanwhile, is not due out until next year.
Orr was also said to have predicted that increasing sales of ARM-based netbooks will continue to push up Linux netbook share, especially in less developed countries where overall netbook growth will increase at the highest rate. As a result, ABI projects that Linux will overtake Windows on netbooks by 2013. To address the ARM challenge, Orr told Lai that Microsoft should do what it did with Windows XP on netbooks, and slash prices on its ARM-ready Windows CE or Windows Mobile.
Further publicly revealed findings in ABI’s UMD study include the projection that UMDs, including netbooks, MIDs, and UMPCs, will top 124 million systems shipped in 2011. Meanwhile, the separate "mobile consumer electronics" category, which includes personal navigation devices (PNDs) and eBook readers. is expected to move from two million device shipments this year to 50 million in 2014.
As for netbooks, the research firm noted that while in 2008, 74 percent of netbook shipments came from Acer, Asus, and Samsung, the 2009 market is far more diverse. Major PC vendors selling Linux-ready netbooks include Dell and HP, which offers models such as the Linux-ready HP Mini 110, pictured above, at left.
Revisiting the Linux netbook question
The lack of reliable figures on OS share has led to considerable speculation about the respective netbook shares of Windows XP vs. Linux, where the former appears to have dominated over the last year after a fast 2008 start by Linux. Signs of trouble in the Linux netbook world emerged last fall after a promising start in which some analysts figured that Linux had captured as much as 30 percent of the market, compared to one percent in the desktop market in general. Much of the growth came with the groundbreaking Asus Eee PC (pictured below, at right) and subsequent Acer Aspire.
An MSI executive then claimed that returns of its Linux-based MSI Wind netbooks were more than four times higher than those of Windows XP netbooks. In early April, a Microsoft executive announced that an NPD Retail Tracking Service study showed that Microsoft owned 96 percent of the netbook market, and he agreed with MSI Wind that Linux netbook returns were four times higher than with Windows. A Canonical (Ubuntu) executive disputed the MSI and Microsoft claims, while others noted that the NPD story only looked at brick-and-mortar retail instead of online sales, and did not cover international sales.
Yet, a study by Ovum did indeed suggest a slippage in Linux netbook market share. Ovum did not publicly report percentages, but said that the Linux netbook share had dropped considerably in late 2008 and early 2009. Many believe the major cause for the gap has been Microsoft dropping the price of Windows XP and applying other channel and vendor pressures.
This summer, the issue resurfaced when Microsoft’s COO Kevin Turner gave a speech claiming that Linux netbook returns were four or five times higher than with Windows. In August, a Dell executive reportedly answered this by saying that his company’s Linux netbook returns were roughly equivalent to those for Windows-based netbooks.
Lenovo gung-ho on Windows 7 netbooks
While some may question ABI’s 32 percent claim, others believe that Windows 7 will halt any possible swing back to Linux on netbooks. An EETimes story by Rick Merritt quotes Howard Locker, director of new technology for Lenovo, as saying that Windows 7 will make it less likely that notebook makers will adopt Linux-based netbooks.
Locker was quoted as saying, "Our S9 and S10 model netbooks had Linux loads, but they didn’t do well so we stopped selling them." Here, Locker was referring to systems launched in October 2008 for the education market, according to the story. Since then it’s been pretty much all Windows on Lenovo netbooks, however.
One problem that Lenovo’s customers have had with Linux is its lack of support for Apple’s iTunes, Locker was said to have noted. Meanwhile, Windows 7 improvements such as a claimed ten second boot time and one second resume, will fend off Linux-based alternatives, Locker told Merritt. Other touted Windows 7 features include a better suspend mode, lower power consumption, and UI enhancements like multi-touch support.
Despite its upbeat take on Windows 7, the notebook giant is evaluating alternatives, including Google’s Linux-based Chrome OS, Locker was said to have noted, although he added, "It’s too early to tell because they don’t even have alpha code to test."
Locker also had some interesting things to say about wireless technologies, calling ultra-wideband (UWB) "a DOA dead technology," and predicting that Long Term Evolution (LTE) 4G networks would someday supplant WiFi.
Availability
ABI Research’s “Netbooks, MIDs and Mobile CE Market Data” study is said to include forecasts for all Ultra-mobile Devices (UMDs), including UMPCs, netbooks, mobile Internet devices (MIDs), and mobile consumer electronics (CE) devices. Shipments and revenue for these devices are broken down by UMD type, region, platform, operating system, connectivity, and navigation attach rates, says the research firm.
Linux’s share of netbooks surging, not sagging, says analyst
Reports that the Linux netbook is dead or dying are incorrect, at least globally, according to an analyst firm.
Nearly one-third of the 35 million netbooks on track to ship this year will come with some variant of the free, open-source operating system, ABI Research said. The exact split is 32% Linux versus 68% Windows, said Jeff Orr, an analyst at ABI, which works out to about 11 million Linux netbooks this year.
That number contradicts third-party market figures, trumpeted by Microsoft, that showed Linux shipping on as few as 4% of U.S. netbooks.
"Just because you live in the United States, don’t assume that everything is on Windows," Orr said.
Orr said Ubuntu is a popular choice on netbooks, though he declined to confirm that with any hard statistics.
As netbooks running the ARM processor become a major factor, Orr predicted Linux will overtake Windows on netbooks by 2013. That will be driven by consumers in less-developed countries buying Linux netbooks as their primary PCs, rather than North American consumers buying netbooks as secondary machines as predominates today.
While U.S. consumers sometimes appear to have a love-hate relationship with Windows, those non-U.S. consumers have less experience with Windows — and thus less reliance, Orr said.
For emerging ARM-based netbooks, Orr suggested that Microsoft adopt the same strategy that it did last year to wrest away Linux’s initial lead on the hot netbook market, which was to cut the price of Windows XP.
That could mean offering Windows Embedded CE or Windows Mobile, both of which already run on ARM, at a discount to netbook manufacturers, he said, in order to stave off platforms such as Google Inc.’s Android or Chrome OS, or the Intel Corp.-created Moblin.
"They need to get a play started now," he said.
In a statement, Microsoft maintained that "over 93% of worldwide small notebook PCs run Windows today.
"With the recent launch of Windows 7, we believe that trend will continue," the company said. Microsoft touted Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 for ARM, but declined to say whether it would cut its license price to win manufacturers.
Microsoft has also resisted calls to ease and power of developing on Windows CE.
ABI said its 35 million shipment figure is a reaffirmation of an earlier forecast that itself was a slight tweak of its January forecast of 39 million netbook shipments in 2009.
Netbook Linux Guide Lets You Easily Kick Windows XP To The Curb
Sometimes I think if I see another blue sky, green grass background on a netbook I am going to throw it out the window. Maximum PC is ridding my Windows XP blues with a guide to lightweight netbook computing.
They have rounded up some of the best Linux netbook solutions, including Easy Peasy and Eeebuntu. I’m a big fan of the latter and used it for quite a bit of time on my MSI Wind U100. The nice thing about the guide is that it provides step by step instructions on how to load the new OS on along with productivity software alternatives.
Left from the roundup is Moblin 2.1. I have been testing it out for the last few days and will post my impressions soon. In the meantime, if you are also suffering from Win XP sickness try one of these penguin-friendly options or you could always check out our Hackintosh guide. [Maximum PC]
New Moblin Linux Netbooks in the Pipe
At the recent Linuxcon Conference in Portland, Oregon, there were hints of new Moblin-powered hardware being announced at the upcoming Intel Developer Forum. Normally, this would be moderately interesting news, but some of the ambitious comments made by Linux luminaries at Linuxcon merit further examination. People from the Linux Foundation, Intel, and IBM spoke at the conference, and it’s evident that they see the netbook market as the epicenter of the movement to raise Linux’s profile in the consumer space, and whittle away marketshare from Windows. Update: Intel has also announced Moblin 2.1 for phones.
There are a couple of interesting quotes in the PC World coverage of the conference:
“We need to stop pretending that it will be a drop-in replacement [for Windows] and make it something better,” said Bob Sutor, vice president for open source and Linux in IBM’s software group.
Linux failed to retain its early lead in netbooks because it was trying to emulate Windows. “We were trying to win at their game. We in the Linux community are trying to be successful by mimicking what someone else is doing successfully. To me, that is a losing strategy,” he said.
Linux got an early lead in the netbook market because of its favorable economics. The profit margins were so thin that the manufacturers were drawn to Linux because of its lack of licensing fees. But Linux-based netbooks lost momentum early on due to two factors: Microsoft’s extremely aggressive price-cutting of Windows XP OEM licenses from the bargain bin, and, perhaps more importantly, the netbook vendors’ lackadaisical attitude about software development. To a large extent, after putting a fair amount of creativity into designing small and cheap laptops, these vendors failed to put a complementary effort into adapting the available Linux distributions to the hardware and smaller format. More importantly, they failed to support netbook users with a halo of web-based services that would have made using, troubleshooting, customizing and upgrading their new Linux netbooks fun and easy.
So when typical computer users bough these new mini-laptops, they found themselves not only in an unfamiliar environment, but unable to use these machines the way they would normally use them – that is, by installing Windows software on them. In comes Microsoft with cheap XP licenses, and the rest is history.
As much as we can all scoff at Apple’s claims that the iPhone is their answer to the netbook, there’s a lesson to be learned there. New iPhone users are faced with a radically unfamiliar computing environment, user interface, form factor, and software ecosystem, even more so than a Linux netbook buyer. So obviously the iPhone completely failed in the marketplace. Oh yeah, it didn’t. And not only because of the reality-distortion field. The iPhone overcame the unfamiliarity hurtle because its radical user interface was well-suited to its form factor, and because Apple built a scaffolding around the iPhone experience that (eventually) made routine personalization of the device easy.
The netbook’s strength and weakness is that it is a rather familiar form factor, so people expect it to act like a laptop PC. I believe that people will always be more accepting of alternative operating systems when they come in unfamiliar packages, such as a mobile device, DVR, NAS box, or alarm clock. But failing to target a very popular mini-laptop market just because there’s a built-in expectation of Windows-like functionality would be a pretty timid strategy, and it doesn’t look like Intel, IBM, and the various Linux distros are ready to throw in the towel.
When I first learned that Intel was putting money behind Moblin, I’ll admit I wasn’t enthusiastic. Intel is one level abstracted from the OS market, since they don’t make devices themselves, and I doubted that such a big company would be able to sustain interest in such a seemingly non-core project. But I’m coming around, because I now see that it’s really in Intel’s best interests. Intel had an easy time of it all through the eighties and nineties, because every computer user in the world was perpetually unsatisfied with the speed of their computer. But early in this decade, Moore’s Law turned around and bit Intel on the ass, when suddenly everybody’s three-year-old computer was still faster than they would ever need for their routine computing tasks. Intel has spent the past decade desperately trying to think of things for regular people to do with computers that would require vastly faster processors (video editing? virtual reality? weather simulations?) but have so far come up short. And where the real action is these days, in mobile and novel computing devices, Intel is working at a disadvantage, since it has robust competition in the low-power space, such as Freescale and ARM. But for devices that span the gap between low-power mobile devices and high-power PCs, Intel dominates with the Atom, and if they can figure out how to get mid-power computing devices to catch on big-time, then they’ll have a strong opportunity in that market.
As the presenters at Linuxcon pointed out, Microsoft is about to give the Linux netbook market a big gift: for strategic reasons, Microsoft can’t continue to sell Windows XP on any device. Everything has to move to Windows 7. But there’s no way that OEMs will be gettgng Windows 7 licenses for next to nothing like they were for Windows XP.
“What I hear when I talk to netbook vendors is Microsoft does not want to repeat the extremely aggressive pricing with XP Home. They want to significantly increase the price for Windows 7 netbooks,” said Dirk Hohndel, chief technology officer of Intel’s Open Source Technology Center.
So here’s Linux’s big second chance. Microsoft will likely let them lead on price again, and with Intel beind Moblin, there’s a good chance that the next generation of Linux netbooks will have not only a robust underpinning, but a pleasant and different user experience. Many different players (including Intel and Novell) are already discussing setting up “App Store” type sites for Moblin devices that are likely to appeal to a broad spectrum of users. Adding to this perfect storm is the rise of cloud computing and the usefulness of apps like Google Apps, which chips away at Microsoft’s desktop stranglehold.
Microsoft, of course, will play to its strengths, and the fact that Windows 7 is a very good desktop operating system and should run quite ably on varous kinds of lighter-weight devices and enable users to tap into the vast library of familiar apps will ensure that it’s a major player in this market, even if it will be a struggle for them to balance profit margin and marketshare in this space.
Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation says that within a year, “no one will buy hardware or software” and that the market will look a lot like the mobile phone market, with wireless carriers giving devices away for free with service contracts. “Microsoft’s economics don’t fit into that at all,” he said. I’m not sure I want to live in that world, but if that world is coming, then he’s probably right.