In the fast-growing world of open source netbooks, Laptop Magazine reports One Third of Dell Inspiron Mini 9s Sold Run Linux, which counters some recent reports that Linux was losing ground to XP.

Dell attributes part of the Linux growth to competitive pricing on the Ubuntu SKUs. “When you look at the sweet spot for this category it is price sensitivity, and Linux enabled us to offer a lower price entry point,” added Dell senior product manager John New.

According to Dell, the return rate of Ubuntu running Mini 9s are comparable to the XP rate, which we are told is “very low.” “Our focus has been making sure that before the order is taken, the customer knows what he is getting,” New added.

On a similar note, Macworld publishes Why Netbooks are Killing Microsoft, which focuses on the changes to the competitive landscape that ultra-low cost netbooks and open source operating systems and software are creating. Specifically, they seem to be affecting Microsoft’s revenues in a very real way:

Microsoft said that its revenue had increased an anemic 1.6 percent in the quarter that ended Dec. 31 compared to the same quarter a year earlier. But that number doesn’t tell the whole story. Windows took the biggest hit, while systems for servers and related tools had hefty increases in sales. Windows sales were down an eye-popping 8 percent; server and related revenue grew 15 percent.

Microsoft clearly blames netbooks for the drop in Windows sales. Here’s what it said in its statement: “Client revenue declined 8% as a result of PC market weakness and a continued shift to lower priced netbooks.”

With about 30% of netbooks shipping with Linux, and users of even the Windows netbooks unlikely to purchase Microsoft Office (it would cost more than half again the cost of the entire machine), the company is in a difficult situation that is only going to get tougher.

But on the other hand, consumers are benefitting from low cost machines that fill their needs quite well, and that is cause to celebrate.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 16th, 2009 at 12:59 pm and is filed under GNU/Linux, Open Source. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.