To understand this rather highly debated topic, one has to go deep into netbooks itself, to truly understand it:

Rise of Netbooks

Netbooks or low-spec notebooks came into this world due to Asus and their original EEE PC which debuted in late 2007. That PC used the free open-source OS, Linux, came with low specifications and had a low price. It was a hit and netbooks started to gain prominence among the average customer. They began to be viewed as secondary machines having low specs but compensating for that by being low cost. Soon they began to be offered by every manufacturer. It became essential for them, to offer netbooks if they had to increase their sales and weather the downturn successfully. In fact, this is one of the reasons why, Acer has jumped to the second position in the global PC market scaling Dell.

Result

If netbooks are becoming popular, then this means that their market share is also gradually growing and if their market share is growing then the components and the software inside them is also experiencing an increase in market share. This is one of the main reason why netbooks are becoming important for both manufacturers and consumers, and as a result components designed specially for them are being designed and sold. If you take the case of micro-processors, there was no set processor for early netbooks as they required extremely low power and at that time the processors available offered poor performance. Intel recognized this opportunity and created Atom, its low power, low cost processor which was just right for web surfing, making/viewing presentations and light work for which netbooks were originally made. Atom became a hit, and today, most of the netbooks in the market have an Atom inside them. Buoyed by its success, an Atom II is available.

Battle for the Netbook Operating System

Netbooks finally, presented an opportunity for Linux to increase its market share, but Microsoft was not ready to give up so soon and started offering manufacturers its own OS. It could not offer Vista which cannot work properly on entry level notebooks, forget netbooks. So they were left with the more than seven years old operating system XP which was a temporary solution until Seven was ready. With Windows 7 being finally released, Microsoft finally had a proper alternative but found a new competitor: Android and the soon-to-be released Chrome OS from its arch-rival Google.

But seriously, is Android any competition? Google itself acknowledges that Android is a operating system designed primarily for mobiles and not netbooks. Chrome OS, its operating system for PCs is being developed primarily for netbooks and will surely counter Windows 7 in the near future. This move itself proves that Google did not think that Android primarily being a mobile OS would have enough “power” to challenge Windows XP or Seven. Android being a new OS also has this major disadvantage that people view it as an immature OS for mobiles so you can imagine what they might think of Android on netbooks.

Besides, the short comings of Android, Windows also had this major advantage, of people being familiar with the Windows OS which in turn helped increase the sale of XP netbooks and start the demise of Linux netbooks. According to Microsoft, the return rate of Linux netbooks is quite high. But now with an up-to-date OS in the form of Windows Seven, Microsoft doesn’t have any need to loose sleep over Android or Moblin or the numerous other operating systems.

To conclude, Android at best can be offered as a dual-boot OS to users with Windows Seven or Windows XP but it simple cannot take the place of a mature OS such as Windows. I don’t want to say that Android is a poor OS but it is instead being developed for a specific niche in mobiles and not netbooks. Google Chrome OS may well emerge as a worthy contender to upset Windows Seven’s sales for netbooks.

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Filed under: Microsoft, Win 7 Community, Windows7