| | By John Daly in Germany @ Tuesday, March 17, 2009 1:47 PM
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| | A new research report by Taiwan's Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute (MIC) states Microsoft Windows is going to prevail in the netbook market.
Linux in contrast will dwindle and become more or less become irrelevant, reports the Taipei Times which managed to take a peek at the Chinese language report. MIC estimates Linux is going to be installed on merely 10% of shipped netbooks this year, in contrast to 70% back in 2008. The 60% slash is apparently because of not enough peripherals supporting Linux. Consumers also want to stick with Windows.
Around 11.2 million netbooks were shipped in 2008 and Linux was preinstalled on the vast majority. Asustek shipped copious amounts of its popular Eeepc netbook around the world, which ran Linux. Since then, Windows has been gaining a foothold in the netbook market. Netbook shipments are also set to grow this year. MIC expects shipments could grow by over 100%, to around 23.2 million devices. If MIC's report were to be true, only 2.3 million netbooks would run on Linux, whereas the rest would make users and Steve Ballmer happy by booting with the Windows logo. Nonetheless, Linux is not set to go extinct in the netbook arena as future demand may change, says MIC.
One may scratch one's head and wonder if up-and-coming $200 netbooks based on Freescale's ARM-based reference design and running on Ubuntu have been taken into account. Freescale has been partnering with Pegatron, Asus' original design manufacturing (ODM) unit. The two companies will be offering a platform by the second half of this year, which will set back punters merely $199 for a netbook, or $149 for a nettop. Both device types are to be powered by Freescale's i.MX515 processor, which is based on ARM's Cortex A8 design. The units will be powerful enough to decode 720p HD video and are bound to give Intel a run for the money. X
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