Over 20% of HP Notebooks in India Sold with Linux
According to a 2004 article (“Laptops pre-loaded with Linux getting popular“) in India’s “The Hindu,” HP India’s country manager for consumer portables, Rajiv Grover, said “between 20 and 22 per cent of our laptop business came from notebooks loaded with Linux.”
That was just over two years ago; what is the status today? More large corporate migrations, particularly in India, continue to make the news, but little effort has been made (of which I am aware) to calculate the current sales, usage, and marketshare figures for Windows vs. Linux in India.
As a rising giant, India is an exceptionally important market battlefield. If Linux was so popular two years ago, I can only imagine it has grown a great deal since then–I really must find more data on the Linux-in-India situation!
June 19th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Did you ever get any data on this. I have considered doing business abroad and was curious what you found out on this.
Best Regards,
Keith
June 19th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Hi Keith,
Information has been irregular, so I don’t feel I really know the market circumstances in India now. I have heard many reports of government agencies strongly promoting open source, especially in the southwestern state of Kerala. In some places it has even reached the point that it’s entirely displaced Windows and MS Office for many agencies.
The private sector could be a very different story, however, and I really don’t know what its current state is.
Let us know what you find out if you travel there!
-Ben