Linux Netbooks have a 32% market share?

[LinuxMint-4]

Linux Netbooks have a 32% market share?

http://vista.blorge.com/2009/12/09/why- ... ment-83544

Windows and Linux have a combined netbook market share of 125 percent. Or at least that’s the message if you don’t dig deeply into rival claims made this week.

There are numerous reports that Linux has now achieved a 32 percent share of the netbook market, but Microsoft has supposedly hit back by claiming it has a 93 percent share. There are several reasons for the apparent disparity, the most prominent being that they aren’t like-for-like comparisons.

The Linux figure comes from ABI Research but is based on shipments for 2009. The Microsoft figure is for all machines currently in use. It’s perfectly feasible that both could be correct, which would suggest that Linux will increase its overall market share over time if this year’s trends continue.

Such figures are always likely to be disputed as there’s no clear definition of what a netbook is. Indeed, Microsoft prefers the term “small notebook” and was even accused of taking liberties about the way it decided which machines fit that category when setting licensing rates for Windows 7.

Jeff Orr of ABI notes that US figures may give a misleading impression of how the two systems are performing on netbooks, with Linux performing much better in developing markets where cost is a particularly important issue.

He also says his 32 percent figure may be an understatement as he hasn’t included machines where the user has replaced Windows with Linux themselves. He’s also left out dual-boot machines which come with both systems installed, but with Windows as the default option.

Of course, it’s worth remembering that in the big picture, the significance of netbook market shares depends on how well netbooks perform overall. At the moment something in the region of one in ten PCs sold worldwide are netbooks meaning that, while losing netbook sales isn’t a good sign, Microsoft would still dominate the PC market even if it never sold another netbook.