Last week I made a summary of the current state of the Linux netbook market. Today I will show you that Linux netbooks are at a crossroad. They can reach a bright future and a significant market presence through 3 different paths: the smartbook path, the cheap path and the power path. I will explain how each path will lead the Linux netbook to market dominance in a specific niche.
The smartbook path
As I explained previously Qualcomm, Nvidia and other manufacturers of ARM based processors are releasing processors powerful enough to power a netbook. This is effectively starting a war with Intel and it's Atom processor. Netbooks based on ARM designs have many advantages over Atom based ones: they will be much lighter, have longer battery life and cost less. Even if these processors are less powerful than the Atom, they have acceleration circuits for video decoding, so with the right driver they should still be able to play HD video better than an Atom based machine.
This is entirely to the benefit of Linux, as the ARM based processors can only run Linux, Symbian or Windows CE. Since Windows CE is rather a bad product with poor third party application support Linux alternatives like Android or the ARM versions of Ubuntu and Xandros should be able to get a large part of the market. Linux may be coming late to this market however: The netbook version of Google Android will probably not be ready until next year, and the ARM versions of Ubuntu and Xandros are still new and unproven. It is probable that the first machines will come with Windows CE, but that these will be replaced by Linux based machines next year.
The cheap path
As Caitlyn Martin pointed out recently, the price of entry level Linux netbooks is dropping to incredible lows! You can now get a basic Linux netbook for less than $200. The original Sylvania GNET
Microsoft has no intention of lowering it's prices, in fact most rumors suggest that Windows 7 starter will cost twice as much as Windows XP to OEMs. This means that the netbook manufacturers will be forcer to increase the price of their Windows based products. This will widen the price gap between Linux and Windows based netbooks even more. If you add the fact that Linux netbooks require less resources than their Windows counterparts to deliver a smooth user experience you have a situation were Linux based netbooks will be ideally placed to sell as cheap companion machines. Windows netbooks on the other hand will look more and more like expensive and underpowered mini laptops. Cheap subsidized netbooks have another advantage: since the 3G network operators have their own "Brick and Mortar" shops this will create an extra outlet for Linux netbooks on which Microsoft has little control.
The power path
The two paths above are nice if what the buying public wants is a companion machine, but a lot of people would prefer to have a netbook that could replace their notebook. Microsoft however has been kind enough to provide a trump card to Linux in the power user market too. You see, Microsoft has put a lot of unreasonable restrictions on the hardware that can be sold with Windows 7 starter edition. This mean that Windows based netbooks are very limited in HDD space, memory and performance. Microsoft is doing this to try to push consumers toward much more expensive machines featuring pricier editions of Windows 7.
The result however is that Linux based netbooks can be much more powerful than their Windows equivalent. Archos recently released in France an Ubuntu netbook with a 500 Gb HDD and 2 GBs of ram. Because of Microsoft's restrictions such a powerful machine could not be sold with Windows 7 starter or Windows XP. This means that for the mini PC enthusiast that wants a powerful machines with lots of local storage the only option is in fact Linux! This has the added advantage that power users mostly shop online, removing the "Brick and Mortar shop" barrier is mentioned last week.
Conclusion
As we have seen there are a lot of ways for Linux netbooks to assert their superiority to Windows based machines, but there is work to do. For the smartbook path to realize the ARM compatible Linux distributions will have to be more polished than Windows CE, feature a lot of extra software and be available soon. The cheap netbooks will need to be sold in the high street as well as online, something that is not the case now. More power Linux netbooks need to be released, as the Archos is currently available only in France. On the whole I am optimistic though, as the failure of one path does not necessarily means the failure of the others! There will be at least one path that will successfully lead Linux netbooks to their bright future
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