Going against what many people believe, there is actually a very vicious battle going on right now among OS designers. On one note, we have Windows, who is releasing a good operating system that sees a lot of action, but that is in a lot of ways, unable to compete with Google Android, which is not only open-ended, but freely sourced – meaning that Google Android is being offered for free to phone users who want it. Is this hurting Windows?
Well, you know that it has to be, especially since it is being offered for free! It is hard enough to compete with an operating system that costs a considerable amount of money, and in case you haven’t forgotten, Windows is usually the platform that is the most affordable, but when you get a platform like Google Android, that seems to offer what everyone needs on a high-quality level, a company like Windows starts to sweat a little bit.
What is perhaps the most interesting thing about this is that Google is setting itself up for better things in the future by offering Google Android for free. Instead of making money on Android now, Google is probably planning to expand it’s Web presence with Android, so that it can increase it’s ad revenue – or even by doing bigger things that we do not know about yet!
But even with Google Android freely sourcing and Windows working hard to sweat it out, we have not even discussed the big players in the handheld, mobile market. Apple and Blackberry are actually the heavy hitters here, making the mobile market more competitive and fierce than an electronic market has been in a long time. Will one company eventually dominate the market, or will it remain competitive forever? Only time will tell, but for now, one thing is for certain. If Windows wants to compete with free Google Android software, it had better come up with an OS that kicks butt – it cannot afford not to.