GNU/Linux forces Microsoft's Windows margins to decrease

Summary: Analysis of the GNU/Linux factor in Microsoft's negative results

Sub-notebooks are hurting Microsoft's bottom line because GNU/Linux competes also on price proposition, not just Freedom and technical edge. The result is very clear to see [1, 2] and to corroborate we have:

Microsoft earnings drop as netbooks take chunk of PC sales

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The client division saw its revenue drop by a bit more than $600 million, with income down by almost the same amount. The trend of the PC market towards netbooks, which either run Linux or a low-cost version of Windows XP, undoubtedly hit this division hard. With Windows 7 apparently progressing well, however, the light may be visible at the end of the tunnel here, provided the company can convince netbook makers to pay more for the improvements it brings (and consumers are interested in its netbook version).

Matt Asay alleges that "Netbooks bleed Microsoft profits. It's about to get worse." Here's why:

After all, Canonical, which develops Ubuntu, the world's leading consumer-focused, Linux-based desktop operating system, on Monday released a Netbook-optimized Ubuntu distribution, as IDG reports.

Better battery life. A nicer visual experience. An operating system tightly tuned for applications like e-mail, Web browsing, and office productivity. All for a price that is dramatically less than Microsoft Windows...even after Microsoft discounts.

Windows XP? No thanks, says this prominent writer.

Rant: Microsoft Windows Out of Box Experience Sucks

OK, rant mode on. This morning I spent over three hours running Windows Update on the cool Viliv S5 UMPC I am evaluating. Yes, I realize it runs the older Windows XP operating system, but even so Microsoft must make the out of box experience (OOBE) better than this. I have recently experienced this process with Vista too, and it’s no better than XP. It’s time that Microsoft fix this absolutely unbearable process.

The entire Windows Update process resulted in 5 reboots and took almost 3.5 hours. That is ridiculous in and of itself, but watching it closely (something you have to do as it requires user input at inopportune moments) really got me steamed, as I realized that Microsoft could easily fix this stupid process.

Windows Vista seems to be passé already. To prove this, we conducted our weekly experiment. We grouped together news picks from Yahoo! News and Google Groups, accumulated using RSS feeds for the keyword "Microsoft". Slicing based on the presence of "Vista" inside the headline, we have just 2 matches. Doing the same for "Windows 7" we are left with 17 matches, which is almost 10 times the number of "Vista". But Vista 7 does not even exist yet (it's vapourware). In fact, given that the Microsoft-sympathetic blogs are now crowing about "Vista 8" (Windows 8), it's clear that something is wrong (there are more new examples and they arrive from the usual suspects).

“There is a group of Microsoft-sympathetic reporters who spin Microsoft's bad financial results...”Forbes Magazine has just come up with the headline "Forget Vista", but it's actually more of an advertisements for Vista 7. The Shane O'Neill marionette is promoting Vista 7 although it does not even exist yet (at least not as a product). The message he is sending from IDG goes along the lines of: "it's coming, it's coming, so get ready because there is no other choice." Richard Waters from the Financial Times^* plays along with the Microsoft 'party line', as usual. There is a group of Microsoft-sympathetic reporters who spin Microsoft's bad financial results and rather grim outlook; Waters is usually one of them. ⬆ ______ ^* Or financial tiems[sic], i.e. TIE-MS (ties with Microsoft).