Is Linux Commoditizing the Desktop OS Market?
Glyn Moody wrote an interesting article for the Guardian earlier this month titled “Why falling Flash prices threaten Microsoft.” It got me thinking about commoditization; specifically pondering the question: Is Linux driving the O/S towards commoditization as many would have us believe?
The key point of Mr. Moody’s article is that several converging market forces are poised to impact Microsoft’s dominance of the operating system and productivity software markets. Those forces are as follows:
* low hardware cost of the new ultra-portable computers such as the Asus Eee
* low memory and storage requirements of many Linux distributions
* increasing memory & storage requirements of Windows distributions
* emergence of free web-based productivity applications
While the author briefly mentions the usability of the Asus Eee as being responsible for its success, his primary argument revolves around the cost differential between the Linux and Windows versions. He rightly points out that while consumers are being drawn to web-based applications such as Gmail and Google Docs, and are spending an inordinate percentage of their computing time using a web browser, each new release from Microsoft requires more and more physical resources from its host system.
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