Earlier this week an article concerning Vista and market share and one about how Open Source Software has cost the IT Industry $60 Billion dollars over the last five years or so hit the newswire. Needless to say this generated some conversations about their validity.

Linux represents 15 percent of the smartphone market, but that figure should grow considerably, says a market research report. The study, from Strategy Analytics, found that Motorola will continue to drive the growth for mobile Linux, along with Google.

Google Chrome is without doubt the fastest growing web browser in terms of global market share. It was first released as a beta version on September 2008, and in just two years it quickly climbed to third place (behind Internet Explorer and Firefox) eclipsing Apple's Safari.

The Linux server market is poised to reach $50 billion dollars in three years. The embedded, mobile and netbook markets have exploded recently, resulting in rapid expansion of Linux use in companies previously who used proprietary offerings. When a market grows this quickly, the need for well trained developer talent rises just as precipitously.

Everywhere you turn nowadays, another company is targeting the Small and Medium Business (SMB) marketplace. SMBs are growing, and represent a segment of the IT market that has not been fully exploited by many, including open source software vendors that boasted early successes with large enterprises.

In the North American market for POS (point of sales/service) terminals, Linux grew 32 percent year-over-year, according to figures released by IHL Group. The research firm reckons Linux accounted for $475 million of the $5.56 billion market, putting it third overall with an 8.5 percent market share.

If you’re a managed service provider mulling your VoIP options, keep this in mind: A growing number of customers — especially in Europe — are embracing IP phone systems that leverage open source and Asterisk. In fact, the European market for open source VoIP is growing 70 percent annually, according to one market researcher. Here’s the scoop.

VMware leads a rapidly growing market with a proprietary product. That’s the basis of estimated value of at least 10 billion dollars. But is VMware ESX really proprietary?

According to AndroLib, Google's Android Market has just crossed the 20,000 application milestone. The new milestone comes just over three months after reaching the 10,000 mark and shows strong application growth for the open source mobile operating system.