gibbergibber - 12:30 am on Jul 31, 2007 (gmt 0)

Here's something that might be interesting: there are now over 1 billion (and rising) cellphones sold every year. It's by far the most popular form of computing device, in fact it's by far the most popular electronic device of any kind.

If smartphones (phones with multitasking operating systems that can run third party software) gradually dominate phone sales, they will very soon catch up with and overtake PCs as the world's biggest hardware platform.

Microsoft's worldwide market share in smartphones is pretty low, about 15% or so, with the majority of the market belonging to Symbian (which is jointly owned by Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and others). But in the developing world, Linux dominates smartphones, and as most future growth will come from India and China, Linux might well end up becoming the world's standard operating system by the mobile back door.

Some of the latest smartphones can be plugged into a television and keyboard, making a cheap, easy and instant PC with its own wireless internet connection. That kind of approach could be ideal for grabbing market share in emerging markets. Many fast-growing developing countries have leapfrogged landlines in favour of wireless cell networks, perhaps they will leapfrog desktop computing in favour of mobile computing.