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Our Blogs The BeerFiles Asus Eee PC - breakthrough Linux product faces threat
Our Blogs The BeerFiles Asus Eee PC - breakthrough Linux product faces threat | Asus Eee PC - breakthrough Linux product faces threat |
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| Written by Stan Beer | |
| Friday, 23 November 2007 | |
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Page 2 of 2 The product widely credited for Apple's resurgence as a force in the world of consumer technology is the iPod. There are an estimated 120 million of them sold into the market to date and they are selling at a rate approaching 40 million a year. The software that goes hand-in-hand with and is virtual indispensable to the iPod is iTunes and its associated online store. All of the better iTunes substitutes on Linux are capable to some degree of recognizing and interfacing with an iPod. However, none of them can be expected to provide the seamless integration of iTunes itself. Most importantly, however, there is no application on Linux that will enable a user to access and buy products from the iTunes online store. Attempts to run iTunes on Linux using the Wine application layer have reportedly met with mediocre results at best. So unless Apple changes its policy, iTunes is not an option for the current Linux version of the Eee PC. Of course, there are many Eee PC users and prospective who don't give a toss about iTunes and many who will just use their desktop for iTunes purposes. However, given that a large segment of the target audience for this product will be young people and iPod owners, when faced with a choice between a Windows version that can run iTunes and a Linux version that can't....well. Asus is not a philanthropic organization - it is a hardware company operating in a cut-throat market with paper thin margins. Asus claims that it will sell 350,000 Linux Eee PCs by the end of the year. It also claims that it will bring out a Windows version of the computer by the end of the year. It also claims that it will sell 3-5 million Eee PC units by the end of 2008. What Asus doesn't make clear, however, is what proportion of the Eee PC units in its 3-5 million sales projection for 2008 will be Linux boxes. Clearly, Asus knows which side its bread is buttered on or else it wouldn't even bother to bring a Windows version of its product to market. The Eee PC goes on sale in Australia in a week or two. These are the first Linux boxes targeting consumers in a big way and from the buzz in the market they should sell well over the Christmas shopping period. It will be interesting to see what happens when the Windows version of the Asus Eee PC hits the market. Will it increase sales of Eee PC further or will it merely cannabilize Linux sales?
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