Are the Operating System Wars Back?

by Sam Dean - Oct. 29, 2009Comments (0)

Ask many people who witnessed the rise of the PC when the operating system wars ended, and they'll think of many years ago, when Microsoft Windows arrived on about nine in 10 computers. While the Linux community often argues that the operating system wars are still raging, at least on the desktop, "raging" is a hard argument to support. Still, depending on which angle you view the modern operating system struggle from, there is a lot of interesting competition going on. John Dragoon, CMO of Novell, said as much in a Forbes piece titles "Battle of the OS Titans."

According to Dragoon:

"Google announced this past summer that Chrome OS would be available in 2010, sparking speculation and excitement throughout the industry. Microsoft has been working overtime to assure the 90% of the market it does own that Windows 7 will indeed address all the Vista concerns. The iPhone had one of the most successful showings of any mobile device in its first year with 5.2 million units sold in the third quarter alone. And finally, in the face of economic pressures and shrinking IT budgets, reports show that Linux adoption is on the rise, especially on netbooks and mobile devices."

As Dragoon concedes, Microsoft still owns 90 percent of the operating system market, but there is a lot of healthy competition on, especially among mobile operating systems. We've written widely about the prospects for the Android operating system, and one of this week's biggest tech news stories is the Droid phone, based on Android 2.0. Name any Windows Mobile phone that is getting so much attention. Meanwhile, numerous flavors of Linux march ahead, and Google's upcoming Chrome OS is indeed going to be one of the most interesting stories of next year. The operating system wars continue, and the desktop doesn't represent the only battlefield.