Windows device development faster, cheaper than Linux? (Register)

Windows device development faster, cheaper than Linux? (Register)

You're right that an additional per-unit license fee does mean that the Linux solution becomes cheaper at high volumes. But that's the kicker: the volumes required are often in the _millions_. The reality in the embedded market is that very few devices actually sell millions of units. Far more designs only sell, if they're lucky, in the 100s of thousands of units, which isn't enough to make Linux pay off.

The reality is that it's very hard to drive a consumer electronic device to wild success. Market windows of opportunity are short, consumers are fickle, and the failure rate (in terms of commercial success) for new gizmos is very high. Under those conditions, manufacturers are strongly motivated to pick the platform that will let them try out more different designs at lower development cost and faster time to market, in order to increase their odds of having one of those designs turn out to be a hit.

But let's say that company X tries out 20 different products, and one of them becomes a hit. Yes, _if_ they had picked Linux for that product, their margin would have been higher and they'd have made more money. But there's no way for them to know ahead of time which one of the 20 was going to be the winner. So they opted for the option with the lower up-front investment for all 20 designs, and who can blame them?

Linux is undeniably cool, but from a business perspective, in the real world's market conditions where 99+ percent of consumers don't care one bit what OS their cool gizmo is running, Microsoft's offerings start to look pretty good.