Robert Pogson

“The number of Internet subscribers increased by 75.1 percent in the quarter compared to same period in 2011.

However, the number of broadband subscribers declined to 1,002,701 from 1,006,071 posted during the previous period, mainly due to a reduction in the number of fixed terrestrial broadband subscribers.”
see allAfrica.com: Kenya's Internet Users Hit 16.2 Million

What a difference a decade makes! Ten years ago, Wintel would have been the only way to go for the IT ecosystem but it was too expensive. Now Kenyans have the choice of small cheap computers running */Linux and are loving it. Wintel need not apply.

“Windows 7, after five months of public availability, had captured 10.5% of the market. Even the much-maligned Windows Vista did better than Windows 8 at release — and in fact, to this day, still has a larger share of the market than Windows 8 (5%). Manufacturers aren’t celebratorily cutting the price of Windows RT tablets; they’re discounting the devices in a desperate attempt to shift unwanted stock.”
see Five months in: Windows 8′s market share finally surpasses desktop Linux

In previous waves of good and bad products, the Wintel monopoly has gotten by with severe lock-in. People were forced to buy the bad and ugly stuff because they did not know they had a choice, FLOSS and GNU/Linux. Today, everyone knows they have choices: Android/Linux, GNU/Linux and even Apple’s stuff. Thus, “8″ is plugging the channels and OEMs and retailers are mad as Hell. They don’t blame the economy, the weather, politicians… They blame M$ and rightly so.

OEMs and retailers have been willing slaves of M$ for decades because of that lock-in. Now that it’s gone, it doesn’t pay to be a slave. New OEMs are emerging with no shackles and trouncing the old guard. The OEMs are having to adapt by shipping what the world wants, small cheap computers, not what M$ wants, bloated stuff which hides their “tax”. Retailers have always taken the risk and the flack from users who wanted to buy a PC but not M$’s OS. Now they can’t even move the stuff except into the dumpster. They can’t even convert the machines to GNU/Linux due to “secure boot”…

Governments have tolerated Wintel because it seemed to be necessary for industry/the economy. Now that */Linux is widely known to be a good alternative, governments are questioning their relationship to Wintel and many are adopting FLOSS themselves. Many are finally able to see the anti-competitive features of Wintel are harming their economies and providing a genuine disadvantage with respect to economies which do not cater to M$.

End users have tolerated Wintel because they took what was on retail shelves and were not computer-literate. Now they have friends running small cheap computers often with nothing from Intel or M$ and they have a choice. Why put up with constant re-re-reboots, slowing down, higher prices, and restrictions on what they can do with PCs when the small cheap computers free them forever from that?

Sand is made of hard particles, harder than the gears. As time passes those gears will wear themselves down until the teeth are gone or the axles wobble. There’s just no repairing Wintel without destroying the monopoly. Even Intel has had to adapt by tweaking Atom at the cutting edge of Moore’s Law and still they can’t compete on price/performance with ARM.

Good riddance to monopoly in IT. It was never a good idea and will eventually be seen as a crime against humanity. Information should be free. Information processing should be a commodity available at a fair price and under fair terms. M$’s EULA was not fair. Locking in consumers, retailers and OEMs was not fair. Governments and courts blinking at the obvious damage to the consumers and the economy was wrong.

He who lives by the sword will die by it and Wintel has locked itself into a high-cost mode of operation that is the ultimate cause of its decline. M$ and Wintel may survive but they will never be monopolists again. The world will not allow them to buy out ARM and they cannot buy out FLOSS for any money. Good-bye, monopoly.

“According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Smart Connected Device Tracker, vendors shipped 367.7 million desktop PCs, portable PCs, tablets, and smartphones – a collective view IDC refers to as "Smart Connected Devices" – in the fourth quarter of 2012 (4Q12), up 28.3% from the prior year. As desktop PCs and portable PCs declined (-4.1% and -3.4%, respectively), the overall smart connected device space continued to surge to just over 1.2 billion shipments cumulatively in 2012. Tablet shipments experienced the largest year-over-year growth in 2012, up 78.4% over 2011, while smartphones grew 46.1% but accounted for 60.1% of all smart connected devices shipped throughout the year.”see Mobility Reigns as the Smart Connected Device Market Rises 29.1% in 2012 Driven By Tablet and Smartphone Growth, According to IDC – prUS23958513.

Well M$ and many others claimed smart thingies were a “flash in the pan” but it’s not looking that way to me. Huge growth sustained over years is not a fad but a movement to smaller cheaper computers. Apple lost dominance in smartphones last year and look to lose dominance in tablets this year. Meanwhile, M$ rides a sinking ship.

Probably the biggest event in the software wars was the evident dominance of Android/Linux v iOS in smart thingies. While Apple came to dominate this space with slick gadgets and promotion, Android/Linux had inevitable advantages:

• It wasn’t from Apple so consumers got a break on the hardware being able to buy what they want in very wide price-ranges from ~$0 for subsidized prices to ~$600 for those for whom price was no matter. Apple sold to a much more narrow market. Their buyers were early adopters and had no need of a newer gadget once the old one was bought…
• You can’t beat the price of the software and the availability of huge numbers of applications inspired by the name of Google made tiny gadgets replace significant numbers of personal computers. The slump in the Wintel PC market is the crater from nuclear tests of Android/Linux devices. The world will not put the Nuclear Age back in the bottle. Ditto the Android/Linux world.
• You can’t beat the usefulness of the software. The FLOSS basis and the fact that the OEMs and Google were not interested in selling software licences made Android/Linux work for everyone with no one holding a monopoly and being able to mess with competition. This is great for consumers, OEMs, retailers and Google whether or not they are cognizant of the principles of Free Software.

Here is the result:

“Desktop” GNU/Linux is really moving along according to Canonical who expect 5% share of “PC”s shipped in 2013. They are having huge growth and good relations with many OEMs and retailers. It does pay to have salesmen when the opposition has a lock on OEMs, retailers and consumers… How far Canonical can ride this wave is unknown but Ubuntu GNU/Linux has a lot of the same advantages as Android/Linux if you replace smart thingies with x86 thingies and Apple with M$.

One of the interesting trends to watch is whether or not the success of Canonical’s brand will spread to other distros. I really would prefer Debian GNU/Linux rather than Ubuntu GNU/Linux on any future PC that I buy. Android/Linux is cool but native code is better in performance and I like to get maximum performance from investments. Still, I think OEMs who use Ubuntu GNU/Linux may well want to offer choice as long as the cost stays low. Ubuntu and Debian are so similar there should not be much difference in cost and Debian has better defaults for most. Canonical is not the only player in GNU/Linux with OEMs. Linpus is doing quite well in China…

Similarly, OEMs are building factories in Brazil to get past a stiff tariff barrier. GNU/Linux is selling well in Brazil.

The strange release of “8″ has prompted many game developers to produce for the GNU/Linux platform. Performance with the latest video drivers seems worthwhile to gamers. M$’s hold on global IT was shaken by Vista and “8″ seems to be an even bigger fracture because M$ is adding restrictions even as consumers are wanting lower prices and fewer restrictions. GNU/Linux can step right in and replace most IT within a few years if this shift generates positive feedback. That’s what happened with Android/Linux and there’s no reason to believe GNU/Linux will not enjoy the warmth.

Virtualization has taken over the world of servers and even a fair share of clients. The movement to cloud services is closely connected with everything. One can use tiny thin clients if some hulking server on the web is doing the work. No one wants to be mobile with a hair-drying PC. No one needs heat and noise in the work-place. No one needs a huge box when a small one or even embedded clients will do quite well. To watch young people browsing, navigating, communicating and scheduling their hectic lives using a pocket-PC is just amazing to me, an old man who gets out of breath just on a small grade.

The last big shift I see counting is the youth, the future of IT. A decade ago when Wintel PCs were the main choice available, folks thought 5 year old children could think of hunting and pecking on a keyboard and clicking on “large” icons. Today with smart thingies appearing everywhere like table-cloths, children as young as 3 can do more faster. The teenagers are simply scary. Small cheap portable computers are soon to be implanted in their brains to increase the bandwidth… A young person today sees no limits in IT. They can have an idea, post it and see a million hits in 24h. There’s no dependence on M$, Intel, Wintel, “big/hot/noisy” or anything at all that doesn’t work for them. Today, ~15% of all users of personal computers don’t even need/want/have a Wintel PC. Instead they have some smart thingy, either running Android/Linux or iOS and this wedge into the heart of Wintel is sharp and moving quickly. Every year, the world creates ~100 million teenagers who have no need of Wintel and at least 10million who may never use Wintel again. It’s a brave new world, moving too fast for old dogs like me and M$. I am retired. I can just hire a teenager if I need one. M$ cannot buy all the consumers it will need to remain relevant.

“A Wall St analyst performed an comparative report at the iconic mega-retail palace Mall of America, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He found that on on 23 November, shoppers at Apple’s store in the famous mall bought an average of 17.2 items per hour, versus the 3.5 items that were purchased at Microsoft’s store, located just opposite the Apple shop.”

see Mall lurk man: Apple smashes Microsoft in Black Friday fondle wars.

There, the market has decided. Given a choice, M$ is the last choice of real people, except those pesky gamers… What would have happened if there had been a “GNU/Linux” store right there and consumers had a third choice?

“Apple Inc. (AAPL) was criticized by U.K. judges in a patent lawsuit with Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) for posting a notice on its website that was “untrue” and “incorrect.”

The U.K. Court of Appeal in London ordered Apple to remove the statement within 24 hours and place a new notice acknowledging the inaccurate comments. The Cupertino, California-based company was told by the same court last month to post the initial notice as part of a ruling that Samsung’s Galaxy tablets didn’t copy the design of Apple’s iPad.”

see GROKLAW.

What were they thinking? It’s obvious the editing of the apology would be unacceptable and criticising the court in the apology was not exactly what the court requested… so now they have a few hours to get it right or face more creative punishments by the court. I expect the court will not be nearly so lenient if Apple repeats this ill-advised adventure. The reality-distortion field around Apple is dangerous. It seems to have affected the operators of the weapon more than the targets. I expect someone could sit in jail next time.

Further, it is interesting to note that one of Apple’s lawyers argued they needed two weeks to tweak their website. Anyone with a FaceBook page knows that’s false. What were they thinking? How much bad PR does Apple want to get out of this legal tantrum?