The growth of Linux in developing regions

Since I started my Blog I noticed an interesting trend. A lot of the readers and individuals who link to my Blog are from developing regions around the world such as China, India, Indonesia and Central/South America. However, most of the time when I am writing about Linux I am concentrating on the North American and European market and there is a huge audience that I am not targeting mainly due to the fact that I don't know much about these regions. One thing is for sure though, while the adoption of Linux is surely increasing in the "West", the future of Linux growth will certainly come from the developing world as well.

China has more internet users than the United States even though the penetration of the internet is high in the U.S. but is still low in China. This means that China has a huge growth potential in this area. Most of us are aware that China uses a lot of pirated software but in recent years the government has been trying to crack down on it. So the trend that is occurring now is that instead of people and businesses purchasing genuine copies of Windows, they are switching to Linux. This might be both a cost issue and the fact that Linux is a great alternative to Windows. With its huge population of 1.3 billion people, the Chinese market will definitely increase the presence of Linux in the world. Even the Chinese government has its own version of Linux because they like the fact that they can see the source code of Linux for political and security reasons...

Indonesia and India are other countries that are linking to my Blog as there seems to be interest about Linux in these countries as well. This might stem from Linux being cost effective or having low hardware requirements. Just like China, these countries have a large population. Indonesia has 240 million people and India has 1.1 billion. There is a huge growth potential because the penetration of the internet is still very low as well.

Even though majority of the time I am focusing on the North American and European market there is a huge Linux user base in other regions of the globe as well. China, India and Indonesia all have a viable Linux market and in the future it will surely increase. The growth of Linux is occurring in the "West" but the developing world will also play a huge role in this trend.

Are you from Asia or are you knowledgeable about the region? What can you tell us about the adoption of Linux? Are people using Linux for political reasons, cost effectiveness or low hardware requirement reasons? What is the trend in the school system, government or private sphere? As more people will purchase computers and connect to the internet, do you think they will use open source or proprietary operating system?

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