Netbook Digest

From PCmag.com article

“From a strategy perspective, the next big innovation milestone is Office 14, our next Office release, which will not be this year, there’s a version of Sharepoint, there’s a version of Exchange, there’s a new version of Office Live.” - Steve Balmer, Microsoft Chief Executive

Balmer also mentioned (admitted) that *gasp* OpenOffice was hurting their sales.

How does this relate to the netbook phoenomenon?

In 2007 roughly 1 million netbooks were sold, all running Linux with OpenOffice standard.

Last year, in 2008, Microsoft cannonballed into the netbook market, and sales jumped to 15 million total netbooks sold.  Conservative estimates put Linux sales at roughly 30% of those 15 million, 4.5 million.  More in-depth numbers and analysis can be found in this post.

Estimates for 2009 netbook sales are as high as 30 million units depending on where you look.

For all intensive purposes OpenOffice suite does everything that Microsoft Office Suite can do.  They’re essentially the same program, except of course for the free. It’s a no-brainer.  As a consumer, if you’re aware OpenOffice exists it’s an easy choice over paying that extra $50 for Microsoft Office on your brand new netbook.  There’s no bigger selling point than free.

Microsoft Office sales being hurt is collateral damage of the rise of the Linux netbook.