The world will be a little better off with a decline of Microsoft. 90% desktop market share is too much. More diversity will be healthier. Chromebooks should take some market share. Microsoft can own 50-70% market share and still be very profitable. They might even be more innovative in other areas.
Enterprise IT is being slowly but surely replaced by online services. The desktop OS ecosystem lock-in that Microsoft enjoyed for so long is definitely on its way out. It will take a long time, since every big company painted itself into a corner with vendor lock-in solutions like Windows, Blackberry, SAP, Oracle, etc, and there are a LOT of people whose job is entirely devoted to maintaining that lock-in. I think we're looking forward to a bloodbath in Enterprise IT in the coming years. I see it every day in my job: big companies are serious about getting off the desktop right now.
If you're in enterprise IT and you disagree with me, remember this: unless you're the CIO, you'll be the last to know.
Who exactly are you speaking for when you say they are not attractive? A large part of Microsoft's share is in school/org licenses. Another large one is for the unskilled users of computers. I would very much consider Google as a real competitor for them.
I look at it this way. Chrome notebooks are priced beyond that of PC laptops, they offer no benefit over a PC laptop running Chrome, so why buy one? Further ChromeOs will have limited local storage, and absolutely no native apps. This means no Skype, no local movie player, etc. A buyer would actually be getting less for their money by buying a ChromeOS machine instead of a $350 laptop at BestBuy with Chrome installed.
The form factor for consumption of media, video and news, does not require a keyboard. In fact it does not seem to require much of the laptop form factor at all. The tablet may already be the best solution, time will tell. But ChromeOS is avoiding stepping on Android's toes, and is not expanding in that direction. And that is limiting.
Leasing will only be available for schools, businesses, and governments--entities already in long term contracts with Apple or PC manufacturers. There won't be much penetration in the short term. And when it comes to price comparisons, ChromeOS will not have the support base and personelle which is already built up around PCs.
Lastly Chrome notebooks necessitate a wireless data plan, but as of now no carrier gives unlimited access for a low, flat fee. That means no unlimited Netflix or Hulu. And judging from my experience with a mobile data card, the connection is not stable enough for video streaming anyway, nor voice calls, nor multiplayer gaming.
Chromebooks actually compete with Windows. Apple basically doesn't - it serves a small segment of premium users. Microsoft is still for the masses and will continue to be unless a competitor undercuts it.
If these numbers are indicative of the US as a whole, 45% of new laptop purchases are OSX. IPhone, IPod touch, and IPad are selling well outside of the premium market. From these data points I still feel Apple is the main competitor to MS.
Being indicative means having predictive power, not being representative. It is often the case that student trends are indicative of larger trends; for instance the number of college graduates looking for employment.
As for laptops, looking at data is better than pointless statements:
Laptop sales correlate with google search trends. The later has a bimodal distribution, with one peak in August and one in December. The former represents back to school sales, and due to its size, it is clear that student purchases of laptops are a significant factor in the market.
I'm more concerned about a company that stores all of my private data and tells me what to look at when I am searching for answers having a dominant market shore.
