Yeah, i know not another “year of Linux” prediction. So lame, but eh, whats the harm really :) I have been thinking for a while now that Android is really the up and coming platform. This article about the android market reaching the 20,000 app milestone seems to agree, but is pretty conservative about it. Things it doesn’t consider is that the Android Market is just one place that apps are released. Apps can be made available other ways, such as a simple download available on the web that you then drop onto your device, or accessed directly through specific URL’s. Also in contrast to native apps there are web apps. Web-apps developed for iPhone’s mobile safari browser also run on other mobile webkit browsers like the one found on Android (and Palm’s WebOS) and vice-versa. There is no count on those that I know of, but they are definitely growing in numbers and I suspect their popularity will be increasing dramatically. Less platform lock in is a big draw for developers. Additionally, existing tools make developing mobile apps relatively easy. For example, Android benefits from already existing tools like JqTouch, xUI, iUI and others Then there is the fact that Android is starting to show up on things other than phones, like e-readers, tablets, and amazing looking reader-tablet hybrids With 2010 just around the corner some people are sure to claim (yet again) that this will be the year for Linux to break out, and they might be right as 2010 is really shaping up to be a big year for Android.
2020 update
Chrome books are Linux, WSL2 on Windows, Android is all over, actual Linux desktop distros are really good, gaming on Linux has never been better, but the stats on desktop Linux usage have not budged a lot in the past decade. 🤷