Linux Online - Microsoft's Red Menace

Microsoft's Red Menace


Publication:	Business 2.0	Date:	Jan 07 2005

When IBM announced last month that it is selling its PC business to China-based PC maker Lenovo, a fair bit of head scratching ensued. But here's an interesting scenario (and let me stress that it's a hypothetical one), courtesy of tech strategy consultant Boris Petrov, that would make the deal pay off in spades: IBM could use Lenovo to spread Linux in the fastest-growing PC market, China.

Seen in this light, the Lenovo deal could be a way for IBM to try to outflank archrival Microsoft. Of course, today IBM PCs run on Intel chips and Microsoft's Windows operating system. But IBM is also the biggest corporate backer of the open-source Linux operating system. While Linux is quite popular on servers, it has gone practically nowhere in the desktop market. Trying to push Linux-based desktop computers in the United States or other developed markets is a losing strategy. But China and other developing markets are different.