Netbook market? What netbook market?

I started posting this as a comment on another blog, but thought I'd expand on it here a little.
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I'm seeing a hell of a lot of babble about how Linux is 'losing the netbook market'. Well, frankly, there is no netbook market, not any longer.

First, to ensure we're all on the same page, let's define the netbook. The Eee PC 70x was the template, so let's use it as our basis. When it came out, it was priced from US$199 for the Surf version, with most units sold being the US$299 701-4G/Camera variant. This unit used solid-state storage to improve battery life; it was small and lightweight. The keyboard was perhaps too small, the screen was perhaps too small, but it functioned for its intended purpose of simple client-side content manipulation and as an Internet terminal. And it was cheap!

Today's 'default' netbook, from a name-brand vendor, delivers quasi-desktop functionality, costs as much as that vendor's (now non-existent) lower-cost notebooks/laptops, ie in the US$500 range, and we have the tier-1 name brand vendors perpetually pushing the price further uphill, introducing pointless feature-creep to justify this price-hike. With most new models coming out with 10"-12" screens, near-full-sized keyboards, these units, although very nice, cannot really be called a netbooks. Let's call them what they are - notebooks and laptops, not netbooks.

While I don't mind the slightly larger screens and keyboards, I do take issue with the price hikes vendors have surreptitiously snuck into the market. Consumers have glommed onto the concept that netbooks are cheap, and by introducing new products as 'netbooks', vendors are using that label to hoodwink consumers with needlessly expensive kit.

So, how does Linux lose in this market? In short, it doesn't - the 'netbook market' has instead morphed into something else: it's become the 'smaller form-factor notebook' market. And in this market, Microsoft has traditionally held a 95% slice (in the OEM, non-Apple realm).

Therefore, what we have here is not so much a case of Linux losing ground in the netbook market, but of Microsoft and OEM hardware partners reshaping the market into "the same ol', same ol'". It has become a market where Microsoft has substantial monopoly market advantages, dating back to 1981, and where it has honed substantial, oft-times illegal anti-competitive market capture machinery.

And yet, even in this market, now reshaped to favour Microsoft's monopoly machinery, Linux still snared 24% of 'netbook' shipments.

Think about that for a second.

The market has become just another facet of client-side PC sales, and in this market, when given a not-quite-fair-but-better-than-status-quo shot at the title, Linux grabs a quarter of it. This is much better than the 1% of the client-side/desktop market that Linux-detractors would have you believe it has in the wider market, the one completely constrained by Microsoft's monopoly.

It gives you an idea of how much market share desktop Linux might grab in a truly open, competitive landscape, given the chance.

Where to from here? Let's get back to basics. A netbook should really retail for US$200-$300, be fast booting (ie, have solid state storage) and retain a functionality focus on the simple client-side content manipulation and as an Internet access terminal, as outlined earlier.

The fact that Microsoft's traditional OEM hardware buddies aren't delivering this, leaves a strategic opening for the 'next generation' of netbook manufacturers to 'do an ASUS' and undercut the current crop, with viable 9" and 10" netbooks, selling Atom-based units with decent specs, running a full-featured Linux distribution aimed at this smaller form factor: Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

It also leaves the door wide-open for sub-$200 ARM based Linux units.

Either or both of these actions will see Linux's star rise once more, on true netbooks. As consumers, let's use our wallets to 'encourage' OEM hardware vendors as appropriate.

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BY conz - Executive Management, Melbourne, Australia
Source：ZDNet

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