Microsoft smells the coffee
At long last, Microsoft has admitted that they really do have competition in the client business. In their annual filing to the US SEC, they named Linux vendors Red Hat and Canonical as direct competitors to their desktop business. Most of us have known for some time now but it’s the first official acknowledgement from the Redmond giant. The key growth area for Linux has been in the netbook market where manufacturers have been installing Linux as a means of keeping prices low.
“Netbooks opened Microsoft to the possibility that some other OS could get its grip on the desktop, however briefly,” said Rob Helm, director of research for Directions on Microsoft. “Now it’s alert to that possibility going forward.”
Prior to this announcement, Microsoft had only ever mentioned having competition from Red Hat in their Server and Tools departments. The filing also mentioned MS’s OEM partners, Hewlett-Packard and Intel’s, growing support for Linux on the PC.
To some readers this admission may not seem like a big thing, after all, Linux has been happily powering a large number of server platforms for some time now and PCs came with Windows desktop as standard. The growth of netbooks as a replacement for full sized laptops has made the difference - early models did not have the specs required to run Vista so manufacturers turned to Linux (free to download and install). At a guess, I’d say that MS would like the whole netbook thing to just disappear so that they can start targetting lightweight laptops — No chance! The reason? Microsoft simply doesn’t make enough profit from the installation of Windows on ultra-mobile PCs.
None of this is really good news for Microsoft, especially when you consider the recent announcement of the Google Chrome OS but things might be as bad as they look. Windows Vista may be too resource intensive for install on a netbook but their latest OS, Windows 7, will feature a Starter Edition that has been designed to replace XP in the netbook sector.
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