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Microsoft eating up U.S. and global netbook markets

10.04.2009
chest thumping last week over its of the U.S. netbook market for February doesn't appear to be just its normal bravado as the company also is charging toward dominance on a global front.

According to statistics from IDC, Microsoft owned 76% of the global netbook market in 2008 and that number will only get bigger in the coming years.

In 2008, came in with a share of 24% and IDC predicts that number will be in the single digits come the end of this year.

Globally, IDC says 10 million netbooks shipped in 2008. That number is expected to double this year and grow by 25% in 2010.

The result would seem to be another market where Microsoft dominates.

The only developments that may derail the juggernaut are mobile device chips, namely the ARM processor, that will be the platform for   OS, Canonical's Ubuntu and other Linux distributions. Netbooks with those configurations are slated to hit the market in the second half of 2009. In addition, the Moblin open source project is focusing its platform efforts on netbooks and mobile devices.