Guy Kewney

It really doesn’t matter much whether the world’s netbook owners prefer Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux so why was Microsoft’s Windows communication manager Brandon LeBlanc so excited about his rather dubious sales statistics?

In May LeBlanc reckoned Microsoft had 96 per cent of the netbook market. “If that’s true,” wrote one commentator (at Linux Devices) then “it would represent a phenomenal turnaround for Windows.”

That’s the real story, of course; not that Microsoft has finally woken up and started using its undoubted marketing power to attack the netbook market, but that it really didn’t think the market mattered until Ubuntu started carving out a substantial sales patch.

Even more worrying for Microsoft: can it match Linux on netbooks that don’t use Intel x86 chips? In the ultraportable and netbook market, performance is not the main issue, battery power is. These devices are, essentially, mobile phones with full keyboards and displays.

Wars have raged at times about which processor chip design is the best and Intel wears the crown in many markets. There’s a lot wrong with the legacy behind the 8086 instruction set which lives on in all Pentium family machines, but you can, largely, ignore much of that.

But the recent range of ARM-based super-phones changes the rules. They are able to match the low-power Pentium-derived designs for speed when they need to, at last. And they are so much better at lightweight, long-term work (such as recording what you type) that Intel has a problem.

That is a problem for Microsoft.

I was looking at the sales figures for Intel versus ‘everybody else’ recently and, honestly, 2009 is not the year where ARM threatens Intel X86. Nor will 2010 be.

The market we used to call ‘PC compatible’ may slow gradually, but only in the ultra-mobile sector is there the slightest threat to that juggernaut and, in revenue terms, Intel won’t lose any sleep for at least two or three years ­ – probably a lot more.

The problem: Intel itself knows it can’t expect to survive entirely on Windows. But its allies don’t seem to have twigged what this means. There are other server platforms, other mesh platforms, other cloud platforms, and Intel understands the importance of supporting these alternatives ­ and it does support them, too. It knows new markets will emerge where Windows will not be a player.

The question is whether Microsoft has accepted this yet. I know there are people inside Microsoft who truly think Windows Mobile is dead. I also know senior Microsoft executives are desperately trying to show them how badly wrong this is.

When I talk to Microsoft top brass, all admit they can’t face a future without a mobile platform. Where we have our debates, however, is whether this is Windows Mobile, or Windows 7 ­ and increasingly, there are voices in Redmond saying Windows 7 is the way to go.

It’s true, Windows 7 is being put onto some netbooks. And some people are saying it’s good. Which is music to Microsoft’s ears. And it is music that is drowning out the sound of the coming storm in non-Intel netbooks.

I bet, in five years, non-Intel netbooks will be well over 20 per cent of the portable computing market (possibly 40 per cent). And my guess as to what proportion of that market runs any sort of Windows (mobile or 7 or 27) will be five per cent.

That’s the statistic LeBlanc has to focus on. He can, of course, catch up with the awful position he was in at the end of 2008 (where he had virtually no share at all of netbooks) and it would be astonishing if Microsoft didn’t pull ahead, on Intel chips, for a year or two. Even XP is a good platform, with a good future (if Microsoft stops being silly about it) and people will buy it if they can.

Ubuntu can’t hope to match Microsoft; and LeBlanc is right to point out his supremacy.

But can he really expect to challenge Android, Symbian and Ubuntu on ARM computers? Can he even expect to match Apple, in that market? I really doubt it, and I suspect there are going to be some panicky slanging matches over the next 24 months, as Intel and Microsoft start blaming each other for taking their eyes off the ball.

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