Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Sat 2nd Apr 2005 20:44 UTC
The future is mobile. That much we know for sure. But it seems that the operating system world in this market is being rapidly taken over by --again-- Microsoft. The new smart phones are are using WinCE, Symbian or Palm. Linux has barely 1% of this new, smartphone market.
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The commentary is flawed on two counts:
1. Symbian already has by far the highest marketshare, and while this marketshare is expected to drop, it will still maintain its dominance for the foreseeable future.
2. Palm has made a commitment "to offer future versions of Palm OS Cobalt as a software layer on top of Linux (specifically, on the Linux kernel plus selected Linux services appropriate to mobile devices)." Therefore, it is likely that within 3 years Linux's marketshare of the smartphone OS will approach 10%, simply because of this move by Palm. Any other adoptions/use of Linux by Motorola, Chinese manufacturers and so forth, will only add to that figure.
There are plenty of web sites listing the facts about smartphone OS marketshare. For example:
http://www.pdastreet.com/articles/2004/6/2004-6-3-Overview-Symbian-...
For the Palm and Linux announcement, see:
http://www.palmsource.com/about/cms_linuxletter.html