In China, the world's largest mobile phone market, smartphone sales for Q3 grew 11.3 percent quarter-over-quarter, reports CCID Consulting. However, Linux's share of the market declined, largely due to weakening volumes for Motorola smartphones, the Hong Kong-based market research firm reported.

HP and IBM claimed an equal share of the global server market in the first quarter of 2008, according to IDC, echoing figures from rival analyst firm Gartner published last week.

Call it a rare triple play in the open source server market. Lenovo, Red Hat and Tech Data are partnering to give partners discounts on select Lenovo ThinkServers with Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced. Here are the details — and the implications for the smal business market.

ABI Research is projecting that in 2009 Linux will represent 32 percent of netbook sales, far higher than the seven percent figure claimed by Microsoft, says a report. ABI also estimates that Linux will overtake Windows on netbooks by 2013, largely due to sales in less-developed countries, says the story.

The open-source Linux operating system is seeing major growth in the mobile and embedded space, especially in the smartphone market. Handset makers and mobile carriers are adopting open-source software because it significantly reduces licensing and development costs and also provides higher flexibility.

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.

Market research firm IDC has released its own quarterly server figures, and came to roughly the same conclusion as its counterpart Gartner did last week: The server market is still down but stabilizing, and the worst appears to be over.

Apple realized some time ago that people might want to dual-boot their new machines so they created Boot Camp. Indeed, Boot Camp does make it easy to dual-boot and they even give you all of the drivers needed to make Windows support their hardware... but what about triple-booting?

Today IDC announced their market sizing numbers showing revenues for servers running Linux or Windows outpaced the sales of the rest of the market in the final quarter of 2007.