Is Microsoft Sliding Into Consumer Irrelevance?
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One of the very misleading things is that Windows and full size laptops remain heavily in the market from many years ago. Current buying trends are very different than existing deployment trends. Lots of home users are still using XP setups on desktops and full size laptops. But new sales for several years have been a very different animal. Not only are PC sales a fraction of what they used to be but the types of PCs selling are very different. Linux (including Chromium) is huge and Mac has increased. All at the expense of Windows.
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Also keep in mind that most sales are not in the US and UK and most outside of those countries are smaller, lighter, cheaper and less likely to be Windows. Viewing the rich Windows-centric countries can provide a very skewed view compared to global sales.
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ZDNet called netbooks the top selling category in 2009. I'm not aware of them having lost that title in the meantime. Maybe traditional (large) laptops have come back significantly, but I've heard nothing of that in the six or seven years since netbooks took over and anecdotally I've only seen netbooks improve. What I've seen, though, is the term netbook being used less as they get more and more power and people forget them as a category.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/netbooks-dead-not-when-sales-are-up-264-percent/#!
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@scottalanmiller said:
I"m going by published numbers that I have seen. That I've anecdotally seen the same thing is just a likely coincidence, I guess. But industry numbers have shown massive Linux adoption for a couple years now.
Define massive.
Mass Linux adoption on the general consumer desktop? No.
Massive compared to where it was? Maybe. -
@scottalanmiller said:
Nearly all Chromebooks are netbooks. Not all, the Pixel, for example, is too large to be a Netbook.
All Chromebooks are too big to be called netbooks. I think the smallest has an 11 inch screen, doesn't it? That's not a netbook.
I'm not aware there is a name for these new breed of low-cost, low spec laptops. Regardless, the $200 HP Stream, running Windows 8.1 with Bing, is currently the best seller on Amazon. This shows that when Windows goes toe-to-toe with ChromeOS on pretty much identical hardware, at an identical price, consumers are still preferring Windows (just). So reports of Microsoft's death have been greatly exaggerated.
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@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
I"m going by published numbers that I have seen. That I've anecdotally seen the same thing is just a likely coincidence, I guess. But industry numbers have shown massive Linux adoption for a couple years now.
Define massive.
Mass Linux adoption on the general consumer desktop? No.
Massive compared to where it was? Maybe.Massive meaning it came from behind and the last time that I heard numbers it was over 50%. Largest is largest. If Windows is big, Linux is massive.
Linux has most definitely been adopted, en masse, globally. It lacks mind share, but not deployment share. I think that it was the OLPC drive that made the swing. That project pumped out so many Linux machines globally that stats started to swing very quickly. The netbook movement came right on its heels and the momentum was in place. Then the Chromebooks came and it just kept going.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Nearly all Chromebooks are netbooks. Not all, the Pixel, for example, is too large to be a Netbook.
All Chromebooks are too big to be called netbooks. I think the smallest has an 11 inch screen, doesn't it? That's not a netbook.
What do you consider a netbook? The "standard" netbook, the prototypical netbook here in the US was the 11" Acer that really took the market my storm many years ago. 11" is the number I've always heard as the main netbook number . According to Wikipedia, 12" is the upper bounds of netbooks.
I'd guess that above 90% of netbooks, at least those sold in the first world, are the 11" or thereabouts varieties with the Chromebooks and Macbook Air leading the way.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I'm not aware there is a name for these new breed of low-cost, low spec laptops. Regardless, the $200 HP Stream, running Windows 8.1 with Bing, is currently the best seller on Amazon. This shows that when Windows goes toe-to-toe with ChromeOS on pretty much identical hardware, at an identical price, consumers are still preferring Windows (just). So reports of Microsoft's death have been greatly exaggerated.
They are called netbooks.
Windows might have gotten back (where do you have the Amazon report on that, is there a best seller link that they keep for current sales?) but it is coming from a position of massive loss of ground. Windows OS is a fraction today of where it was just five years ago. They lost the position of leadership. The Stream is also very, very new. It will take a few months to see if it is just a quick flash in the pan or if it remains a steady seller.
We bought the netbook that it replaces for about $130 and it was, nearly, worthless. Chromebooks for $200 are very nice. Windows netbooks, not so much. Having tried both of the same generation, there is quite a usability gap. But that might not stop people from returning to Windows, but Microsoft is trying a new experiment in making their OS free. It is a brand new experiment and has some serious proving of itself to do.
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I'm not sure there's ever been an official definition, but I always thought they were small (less than 10 inches). But you don't hear Apple or HP ever calling their current products netbooks. At the very least, the term has gone out of fashion.
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OK the light is starting to show through this discussion.
I don't look at an 11" laptop and think netbook, no matter what hardware is in it - maybe my definition is old/wrong - but that's just me. So a Chromebook has never been a netbook to me.
But if the industry is considering Chromebooks to be netbooks, OK I can see that perhaps they are the top sellers.
Additionally - I'll admit I was only thinking about linux machine sales in the context of first world countries. Linux has made little to real inroads there, we are still dominated by Windows and Mac. I know of none of my friends who use a chromebook, and only a small handful who use Linux, and another small handful who use Macbooks.
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From what I remember of my readings of a few years ago, the netbook itself is a "Standard" coined by Intel which is esentially underpowered (cap of 2GB RAM and a maximum of 10" screen size). I can't find a link to the actual standard, so don't take this as 100% accurate.
