The sun is setting, thankfully, on the domination of the Windows operating system.  Surprisingly, the Unix family of operating systems is projected to upstage Windows by 2015.  Am I mad?  No, and I'll show you why, based on current market shares and projections.

The Unix family of operating systems includes Unix (which just had its 40th birthday), BSD, Linux and Mac OS.  What you may not realize is it *also* includes Android and iOS.  Android is based on Linux, and iOS is based on Mac OS, which in turn is based on BSD Unix.

According to Gartner, there will be 2 billion computers by 2014, and they project a 9% growth rate for client OS computers, arriving at approximately 2.18 billion computers by 2015.

Windows (all versions) has approximately 78% of the global market (servers and client computers), so if this holds, we could project that they will have 1.7 billion computers running Windows by 2015.

Unix (all versions - Unix, BSD, Linux, Mac OS) has approximately 19% worldwide market share, so if this holds we could project that they will have 414 million computers running a Unix family OS by 2015.

Smartphones are projected to reach 2 billion units by 2015.  Current market share of Android is 53%, so we can project 1.06 billion Android smartphones by 2015.  Apple's iOS has a current market share of 28%, or 560 million iOS devices by 2015.

So what is the final tally?

Windows: 1.7 billion computers/devices by 2015

Unixes 1.91 billion computers/devices by 2015

The sun is setting on Windows.  Maybe one day we will all know what a slash (/) is and forget backslash (\).  The whole Internet uses slash... except Windows - they just *had* to break the standard, just to be different and confuse everyone!