Open Source Blog

Linux on the desktop is stuck in a Catch-22 situation. Without the potential for volume from a clear market leader the major software vendors will not support it, without the potential for software support on a clear leader the major hardware vendors will not support it, and without the hardware vendor support, desktop Linux will never reach volume.

What desktop Linux would need to break this cycle is for one of the leading hardware vendors to decide to support it in a big way and market it to death, paying the software vendors to port their applications to the chosen distribution and building consumer demand.

This is essentially what the games console vendors do with the latest PlayStation or Xbox or Nintendo, and it works. By throwing money at a product it is possible to generate both the supply of, and demand for, what consumers really want that console for - which is the games software.

The same cannot be done on the PC and the reason for this is Microsoft's monopoly. The company has dominated the desktop market for so long that generating the demand for desktop Linux software would be near impossible, not least because the company is also responsible for the supply of what the majority of consumers would consider the key desktop software.

Even if the same could be done on the PC which hardware vendor is going to do spend all that cash on a desktop Linux marketing blitz? They all rely on Microsoft for too much of their revenue to even consider it. Even IBM, which would be the only company that would possible even dare, has sold off its PC business.

While there is a market for desktop Linux and alternative office software among people and businesses looking for an alternative to Microsoft, but in the grand scheme of things that is a tiny percentage of the total PC market.

There are too many people in the world for whom a PC is not a PC if it does not run Windows and Word - you can show them all the alternatives you like and they would still never consider anything different.

This isn't just a consumer issue, there are many, many desktop support professionals - and plenty of IT decision makers - who have never seen an operating system other than Windows and would not even consider trying to support one (near-religious devotion to an operating system isn't limited to Apple and Linux users).

Microsoft's dominance in the retail and reseller channel (the point of supply) is another barrier. Thanks to its monopoly position, the company is able to keep the price of its software high, passing on a slice of its margins to the resellers.

In this regard Linux's low price actually counts against it. While distributors might be able to take a higher percentage margin on Linux given the core product is essentially free, the zero-cost download price effectively keeps the price artificially low and prevents retailers from charging the higher value margin they would like.

Even selling Linux at high volume would not create the total margins that small numbers of Microsoft desktop products will, and Linux will never be sold at high volume because there is no incentive for retailers to do anything other than to convince consumers that they simply must have the latest versions of Windows Media Center and Office.

Even those people who decide they do specifically want to use an alternative to Microsoft will have to exist in a Microsoft-dominated world, and with the company holding all the cards in terms of interoperability and specifications, you're fighting a losing battle from the start, no matter how much Microsoft opens up.

There is a market for desktop Linux, but like the market for Apple Mac it is limited. Apple has been able to expand its market by offering consumers something totally different - the iPod. Unless desktop Linux is able to do something similar it has very little chance of moving beyond 3% market share.

Even then Apple relied on more than just good technology, as the company's design and attitude combined with demand and a core customer base to make the company "cool again". Neither the Linux distributors nor any of the PC hardware vendors have anything like that level of cool to recover.

All of which is not to say that there is no value to Linux on the desktop, or that there is no market for technical innovation from desktop Linux, or that there is no potential for a sustainable desktop Linux market, but it does present a large number of barriers to serious market entry.

Are those barriers too high for desktop Linux to mount a serious challenge to Microsoft's market share? I think so.

UPDATE
I take it all back. I just got halfway through watching Red Hat's virtualisation launch on RealPlayer when Windows Media Player suddenly popped up, told me it couldn't access the content, and dumped me out of the stream. Now RealPlayer won't re-connect. Thanks Microsoft. So long as Microsoft technologies continue to do things like that maybe there will be an opportunity for Linux to challenge Windows on the desktop.