New analyst’s report predicts a bright future for Linux mobile market with a 62% share expected by the year 2015. Rory MacDonald investigates these astonishing claims…

Bucking the conventional wisdom and Microsoft press releases, ABI Research says that Linux has a 32% share of the netbook market - and predicts Linux will overtake Windows by 2013. Microsoft says “. . . over 93% of worldwide small notebook PCs run Windows today.” They can’t both be right.

Free/open source software and UNIX to gain more at the expense of Windows based on the latest judgments

The Mozilla Foundation has stopped development of a mobile version of its Firefox web browser for Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform. The reason for the decision is that Windows Mobile 7 doesn't support native applications. Until this decision Windows Mobile was one of just two platforms that were supported by Fennec, the mobile version of Firefox.

Gartner analyst Roberta Cozza suggested that, given the strong emergence of free, open-source operating systems, Microsoft might find it difficult to demand licence fees from smart phone manufacturers for the mobile operating software. She also added that the recently introduced Windows Mobile 6.5 was not "a major improvement" from its predecessors.

Microsoft resorts to vapourware-inspired tactics in order to suppress an exodus from Windows Mobile to better platforms, mostly Linux based like the Nexus One/Android (shown above), Maemo, LiMo, Bada, and WebOS

Microsoft on the rapid decline, especially in particular areas where Linux gains quickly

IDC figures show that Linux has actually lost market share to Windows Server over the last three years.

So it is time to start screaming in panic, start selling Novell and Red Hat stock for anything we can get, and enroll in MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer) night classes? Eh, I don't think so.

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.