Microsoft’s Windows XP can well be considered the longest-serving operating system in the mobile market – no other system has been used and actively sold so long after its initial introduction.
Even though it was originally planned to be eliminated much earlier, the emergence of ultra-low-power netbooks caused Microsoft to prolong its lifetime to keep Linux deployments at bay. However, this “amnesty” now also ends:
Just a reminder that – as announced in April 2008 – as of October 22, 2010, OEMs will no longer be able to pre-install Windows XP Home on new netbook PCs. However for a majority of our customers, they may not notice much change; many PC makers have already been actively manufacturing and selling a broad set of Windows 7 netbooks since Windows 7 released in October, 2009. In fact, according to NPD’s Retail Tracking Service, by April 2010, 81% of netbook units sold at retail in the US came with Windows 7 pre-installed.
I would also like to remind people who are still running Windows XP that as of July 13th, 2010, Windows XP SP2 will also reach the end of support. You will need to install the latest service pack available (Windows XP Service Pack 3) via the Microsoft Update website or look at moving to Windows 7 to be running a supported version of Windows. Support for Windows XP Service Pack 3 will continue through April 2014.
Given that Qt Creator now starts to support more and more mobile platforms via Linux, I predict that this decision could result in more Linux deployments in the mobile space (as Windows Mobile 6.5 dies, there is no real need for Windows unless you do BlackBerry) – let’s see…
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