Operating Systems and Web Apps

Once applications become increasingly web based, the operating system, and its compatibility with applications becomes less and less important. Instead, the compatibility issue falls the the browsers used. Thus as long as the browser is written for the operating system that is compatible with the the web application, a number of operating systems could be used to access the application.

Why Important?

This is important because for quite sometime, Microsoft has been using the fact that applications run on their operating system to limit choice in the marketplace. This Microsoft API is what locked many consumers and businesses from buying Microsoft regardless of whether they found merit in the operating system.

Who Benefits?

Well its not Microsoft. One obvious beneficiary is Apple. However, this also means that small OSs can develop (similarly to how Linux developed, only with fewer hurdles as Linux developed prior to online apps). This could make for a very interesting time for operating systems, and can allow for small niche players to be successful, even without a large installed base. The example we give is Opera. Opera Browser is a very good brower that can run on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. However, it has something like 1% of the brower market. Although it is small, it is still a successful browser with a passionate following. In fact, for some time, Internet Explorer had over 90% of the browser market locked up. Now that people see that different browsers like Firefox can run on any type of of operating system, and that they are superior to Internet Explorer, IE marketshare has significantly erroded. This is what could happen to the operating system market under a scenario where applications are run from the web, rather than from the computer.