I was going to let this one go, but too many blogs or news sites are picking up Friday's Microsoft post about Windows share on netbooks.
Brandon LeBlanc put forth the 96-percent figure in a Friday blog post. Late day, Todd Bishop and I discussed Brandon's post over IM. He writes for TechFlash. We both debated blogging rebuttal, qualifying posts, which neither of us did. I should have nipped this one in the bud, as they say.
The growth of Windows on netbook PCs over the last year has been phenomenal. We've seen Windows share on these PCs in the U.S. go from under 10 percent of unit sales during the first half of 2008 to 96 percent as of February 2009, according to the latest NPD Retail Tracking Service data.
Brandon quotes U.S. figures, from U.S. researcher NPD. He doesn't misstate the figures in his post, but they're easily misread as being for everywhere, which they are not. Depending on netbook—or mini-notebook—configuration or market sold, the figure is more like 80 percent and less in some markets, more in others.
About 80 percent of netbook volumes are going into Western Europe, according to IDC. The tiny portables are huge there, with for all of EMEA (Europe Middle East and Africa) netbooks accounting for 30 percent of all consumer portable sales.
The point: The Americas and Asia account for the other 20 percent of mini-notebook sales. That 96-percent Windows represents a small portion of the global netbook market.
Source: microsoft-watch.com
www.vista123.net, easily tweak and customize your Windows Vista
