Android is the grey goo of operating systems, and it's almost breathtaking to realize that a dragged-out Linux will close out next year as the single most relevant and dominant OS on Earth.
The only remaining question mark in my mind: how much might it eventually sell into the portable PC market? (Beyond the natural cannibalism of mobiles blunting PC sales)
_"it's almost breathtaking to realize that a dragged-out Linux will close out next year as the single most relevant and dominant OS on Earth"_
Two things about that:
1. The price of admission to the OS business is to come up with a better kernel than Linux, with better driver support. If that price is higher than the benefit a new kernel will deliver to end-users, it won't happen.
2. The center of gravity in OS innovation is in the managed language runtime and middleware, where Android has done a great job (while Microsoft failed to capitalize on the userland power of the CLR, MSIL, and C# and other CLR languages).
The only remaining question mark in my mind: how much might it eventually sell into the portable PC market? (Beyond the natural cannibalism of mobiles blunting PC sales)