"You are at the top of the hierarchy that matters to you."  

There's a similar battle occurring in the smartphone space. Nokia, BlackBerry, Android, iPhone, Microsoft, and Palm are just a few of the 12 or so mobile operating systems battling to become market leaders. This battle is even more intense than the one occurring in the PC space. PCs sales are only around 330 million units a year, versus the more than one billion cell phones and smartphones sold annually. With these type of numbers, more is at stake for the makers of mobile operating systems.

There is yet another OS battle brewing that could make the PC and smartphone OS wars seem small by comparison. The goal of these operating systems is to deliver a consumer electronics client for use on hardware, tied to what is loosely called a Web OS. Doing so would deliver a special operating system and user interface that works with apps or a Web browser that act much like PC OSes do today. It would tie users directly to apps built around this operating system, but this time the apps will most likely be cloud-based.