Study explains how retailers stop Linux from entering the market
h-online.com
h-online.com
If the conclusions drawn by this paper are true, this is a massive business opportunity. They practically go so far as to imply that close to 10% of the laptop market is up for grabs if only the pesky retail oligopoly would stop sabotaging their own financial interests.
Does anyone believe this to be the case? I'll be frank : if I did, I would be investing in a new venture instead of writing this.
Further, it seems like the 10% savvy enough to want Linux won't be a perfect subset of the people buying laptops from brick and mortar retailers any way. Breaking in to the market would require a lot of other stuff, not necessarily retail (e.g. an efficient supply chain, direct sales to corporate, quality laptop builds, ...).
Assuming it takes the same resources to sell a Linux box as it does to sell a Windows box (which is probably a bad assumption), then the lower price of the Linux box means less profit at a given margin.
It's not Microsoft that's preventing reseller's from offering discounts for Linux, it's basic retailing economics. There's probably only ten or twenty dollars difference at retail when it comes to Linux v. windows when all the factors are considered. It's not as if Linux machines are cheaper in logistics or take up less display space.
It feels a bit weird to be entering into the laptop market just as the world is moving to tablets. Linux on the desktop is perhaps the most tragic case of too little too late.
But, as a hacker I want to try and push the world in a direction I like and not just accept the status quo.
[1] If you're interested in buying a machine, please sign up here - http://giniji.com. We're currently trying to cut a deal with Lenovo, so things are moving a bit slowly, but we should have it sorted soon.
I would buy from him over Lenovo precisely to avoid having to install my own distro. I want a laptop that just works, not a new project.
1. A better price on an equally specced machine because we buy in bulk.
2. Save time installing and much more importantly testing and making sure everything works out of the box. If you like playing with drivers, then maybe this is not for you (although we might want to hire you!).
3. Get to work faster - choose your distro and software packages on the site when you place your order. A fully customised machine is delivered, so that you can get to work the first time you boot it.
Sadly, they didn't live up to the promises; their support has been terrible. But I think the idea has a lot of merit, and I hope your business goes well!
I may have misread the article though.
[1] I'm using one now, but even most of my nerdy friends just use Apple laptops.
They did: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_Eee_PC - and those things sold out. Repeatedly. In multiple locations. Then all of a sudden, Microsoft backpedaled on Vista and binning XP, stripped down XP a bit (including the price tag), and most importantly, strong armed the vendors. Lo and behold, you can't get a netbook with Linux anymore.
Let's face it: the demand is there. Linux has worked just fine on the desktop for well over a decade. The market failed, and the legal system (in the form of patents and copyrights) isn't helping. This is why monopolies, overreaching copyright and software patents are bad things.
One possibility is that the market is too fragmented.
Yes, many of you want a pre-installed linux laptop. However, there are two variables in that "want", the software (which distribution) and the hardware (the amount of memory, the processors, the screen, the pointing device, battery life, etc).
With retail MS or Apple laptops, hardware is the only variable.
So, you've got a significantly smaller market, consisting mainly of folks who are reasonably happy doing it themselves, and it's more fragmented.
Does anyone remember how Macs were sold before the Apple store? You had the mom and pop stores that had the expertise but not the volume to make an impact. You had the online stores that had the volume but if you weren't looking, specifically, for a Mac you wouldn't know there was an alternative. And then you had the B&M stores like Sears, CompUSA, etc. They had Macs, tucked away between the radar detectors and vacuum cleaners. Even if you knew you wanted a Mac the sales staff would try to pass you on a Windows PC. With "friends" like these who needed enemies.
Jobs knew he needed to switch things up so worked on retail store concept. Put it in a place with a lot of foot traffic (mall, downtown store, etc.) and make it easy. Want to check email, facebook, etc? Everyone knows you do it at the Apple store, Starbucks wifi costs money. Now you've got everyone in your store using your OS. They might not buy it right away but you've planted the bug in their ear.
For retailers it's just business. No one demands a Linux laptop and the few that due aren't a large enough market to keep them in stock and on the sales floor. If desktop Linux wants to have an impact it's going to need a lot more than a website with ISOs.
If you want to push an alternate OS, you can't bundle it like a normal PC and sell it alongside Windows machines. You need to do what Apple did, and make it its own thing: a "Mac" instead of a "PC". Someone needs to box up Ubuntu into 3-6 SKUs, slap some cohesive, trendy branding on it, and get it into sales channels as a "penguin" or whatever and NOT a "PC".
Although mine is just an anecdote it still follows, that both our educational systems and our corporate environments play a big part (I'd even say a much bigger part) in keeping the OS market share as it is.
It's not just marketing, it's service and education, too.
Who trains the retailer's staff? What website do customers go to for support (and how does it compare to Microsoft or Apple?
The business model for Linux is based on charging a premium for support rather than rolling it into the retail price. There's a good reason that Redhat stores don't exist. The Linux business is incompatible with consumer channels.
First, they have a positive reinforcement: Mac is "hip", so you'll look cool by using their products (the fact that everybody and their mother owns one or ten doesn't seem to diminish this perception), and also a negative reinforcement because everybody knows "Apple makes easy-to-use products" so if you don't learn to use them quickly you'll look bad.
I'm sure Linux and *BSD have earned more followers by looking different or difficult than by trying to be "easy" (whatever that word means). But that's a discussion for another day...
Not thus far, but once there is a viable "underground" replacement suddenly the Apple will become passe and everyone will be on to the Pear. Apple is nearing that tipping point, at least in some markets. Once trends get big enough, they stagnate until something comes along and replaces them; Apple is approaching stagnation. The market is ready for real disruption if someone can put the pieces together correctly.
People who adopt Macs know its going to be different. The guy in the shop is often saying how much the same it is, and the user doesn't realize that it is different until they try and put the printer driver disk in and it doesn't work.
But the Linux units saw a depressingly high return rate. MSI was reporting it was four times that of the Windows netbooks.
So retailers and manufacturers dropped Linux like a hot potato. Not because of some perverse supply chain structure, but because consumers had clearly and emphatically indicated that they were dissatisfied with the product.
Maybe people just don't like Gnome. (viz. http://tinyurl.com/834bn2j)