The computer desktop today is what the television was to people in the 1980s. It’s the single most important channel for consumer entertainment and information. The computer desktop – as was the case with newspapers before there was radio and radio before there was television – has become the high ground from which empires are built.

The computer desktop today is what the television was to people in the 1980s. It’s the single most important channel for consumer entertainment and information.

If you agree with that statement, then it's no leap of faith that it's the computer desktop on which consumers are best engaged. The computer desktop – as was the case with newspapers before there was radio and radio before there was television – has become the high ground from which empires are built.

While dominance of the desktop has been maintained for the last decade or more by Microsoft, which at one point represented 95% of the desktops used by all consumers, the future is less certain. Platforms such as Apple’s Mac OS X and desktop Linux are slowly gaining ground and eroding the once dominate position held by Microsoft’s Windows. Within the next 10 years, dominance by type of operating system will be evenly distributed among Windows, Macintosh and Linux. There will be no clear winner and competition for the hearts and minds of consumers and developers alike will be fierce – making today’s competition pale in comparison.

In the end however, it will not be a single operating system that prevails.