Why Microsoft wants to kill netbooks?

Last week one of the major business-oriented computer manufacturers, Dell announced that it would no longer produce netbooks. The company will be still selling a couple of Latitude business models, but it's not going to develop new netbooks on the upcoming Intel Cedar Trail platform. Obviously, Dell was not happy with netbook sales. And other netbook manufacturers are also having problems. According to ABI Research, netbook sales in Q2 of this year fell to 7.3 million from 13.6 million in the Q1. At the same time, the sales of the competing technology - tablets during the same period grew from 6.4 million to 8.4 million. But tablets aren't the main reason of the netbooks problem. The main reason is Microsoft.

Microsoft didn't like netbooks from the very beginning. Because the idea of netbook is "Cheap, small, low-power laptop for working in the Internet". The Windows operating system appeared to be excessive for netbooks. Everything was ok with Windows XP, but Vista for the device in which the main application - it browser, was not good at all. And the market price of netbooks ($200-300) can't include $100 for Windows license. Microsoft had to sell Windows licenses to OEMs with big discount. And it's losing money each time when a customer chose a cheap netbook instead of a full-featured laptop.

In Windows 7 Microsoft introduced a number of limitations. First, the stripped version of the OS for netbooks Windows 7 Starter could only be installed on netbooks with smaller than 10.1 inch screen and less than 1GB of memory. Second, Windows 7 Starter lacks some important for business features - Windows Server support, encryption, support for workgroups. While business users - are probably the main buyers of netbooks.

As a result, there almost no good Windows-netbooks on the market. But buyers still want the cheap Windows-netbooks.

Another case with tablets. They cost from $600 and people buy them mostly because of apps, but not because of browser. This niche is more interesting for Microsoft. That's why the new Windows 8 is positioned as an OS for tablets.

The last hope for netbooks - is Google, with its Chromebooks and Chinese manufacturers, that love to produce cheap devices.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/liventerprise/~3/qC2hzh-xwBw/

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