Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc said recent data from NPD shows that Windows share of the US netbook market has grown from less than 10 percent in first quarter of 2008 to 96 percent in February 2009. Brandon claims that this sudden growth in netbook market is driven by consumers’ desire for a netbook computing environment that mirrors their full size PC.

“It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since we first started to see netbook PCs running Windows come to market,” said Brandon LeBlanc. “The growth of Windows on netbook PCs over the last year has been phenomenal.”

In early 2008, Linux was the OS of choice for netbooks. It was believed that netbooks would not only raise Linux market share but also bring Linux to the forefront of consumer handheld market. However as we can see now Linux has again fallen like it did in desktop and mobile phone market earlier.

“Not only are people overwhelmingly buying Windows, but those that try Linux are often returning it,” wrote LeBlanc on Microsoft’s blog. “When they realize their Linux-based netbook PC doesn’t deliver that same quality of experience, they get frustrated and take it back.” LeBlanc pointed out that UK’s car phone Warehouse dropped Linux-based netbooks after seeing return rates as high as 20 percent.

It is clear by seeing the stats that Linux has already lost the netbook battle to Windows. For average consumer getting support for Linux is really difficult and that is the main reason why Linux is not able to go mainstream.
[Via Information Week]