M$ will continue to bleed on netbooks and the fight against GNU/Linux. To hide its shame, M$ is going to report FY 2010 results showing combined “Live” revenue with “Client” revenue. That will make the sagging client revenue sag less. Nice try, M$…
see “Microsoft to detail planned changes in its fiscal reporting structure” by Mary Joe Foley
Netbooks are not going away soon. ARM is taking off. “7″ will burden netbooks with higher prices. Nowhere to hide.
It remains to be seen how long M$ can cut prices for XP or whatever it allows to be installed on netbooks before investors wake up to the reality that they must compete on price and performance in every segment, not just netbooks. That will happen because folks will find the netbooks work well enough that they do not have to pay the price for a regular PC. When they do that they can also open their hearts and minds to ARM and GNU/Linux. Wintel has nowhere to hide, not just M$.
The huge momentum of netbooks is coming from telcos who supply cheap client machines to customers. They will want the cheapest machines, ARM running GNU/Linux. This is commodity computing, folks.
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