Netbooks by the Numbers at Robert Pogson

I hate monopoly. When AMD declined to enter the netbook market claiming they were a flash in the pan they left the field to Intel, VIA and ARM. I keep thinking of specialized netbook chips coming off those 600 mm wafers…

Well, netbooks are not a flash in the pan. They are here for the forseeable future and doing well. Recent numbers from Display Research:

ASP of netbooks is $361
netbooks are 22% of notebook units shipped
year/year growth of 300% units shipped
netbooks are 11% of notebook revenue

Ouch! That ASP really makes it difficult to sell licences for that other OS at “full price”. This means M$ will have to continue to bleed in the quarter where “7″ is released, or cede the market for netbooks to GNU/Linux. If they continue the discounting, even their devoted followers will find it less expensive to hang a keyboard/mousr/monitor on a netbooks and carry on, futher increasing the share of the netbook. Is that a sustainable business model? Even Ballmer says free is not a business model. It will be interesting to see the price structure after “7″ is released. It will be interesting to check back in January, 2010.

The big question is whether or not M$ can afford to allow more than 30 million more PCs to run GNU/Linux each year indefinitely. M$ cannot afford to continue buying the loyalty of OEMs if they drop their prices. There simply will not be enough money to go around soon.

I expect M$ will delay the inevitable by giving better deals for “7″ on netbooks than other platforms. More will switch to netbooks, and, in 2010, M$ will be forced to retrench, either by cutting money-losing lines or ceding the netbook to GNU/Linux. It will only take a few quarters of this situation for the dam to burst. We should know by 1H 2010. By then ARM will have kicked in, too. If M$ tries to raise the price of netbooks, ARM will explode.

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.