Windows hegemony...

There are dozens of PDAs/Smartphones around nowadays, I recently saw Lenovo offering a new example. They all run Windows CE or Windows Mobile.
I'm beginning to wonder if the MS machine is not going to succeed in dominating the mobile market as completely as it does the PC market.
To me, to only real contender in the long term is Linux.

But what about Symbian? Well, who is offering Symbian phones? Look at the new products coming to market...they are predominantly Nokia; and Nokia is kind of hedging its bets and dabbling with other operating systems (e.g. the 770)

So I would say Symbian is on a flattening trend at best, Palm will never extend very far and all the other proprietary systems will gradually be replaced with Windows or Linux.
Windows is in a prime position because it is currently so prevalent in use in the broader PC market, i.e. the applications already use Windows.
It becomes the safe choice for a product developer to make, when choosing an operating system, because no-one will challenge the decision.

The Maemo Linux distribution is pretty good on the Nokia 770, and is certainly capable of providing a good user experience, but I fear that the Linux market will become fragmented for mobile (as it is for PCs) and it will take time for a clear Windows-contender to appear. Think about the product development dilemma again if the choice is between Windows or 1-of-10 Linux distros!

If I had more time, I would have done the journalist thing and made up researched some statistics on how Windows devices are proliferating faster than anything else, but you'll have to be content with a gut-feel.