That's because you don't have to always re-boot a Linux phone

As much as I enjoyed the look and feel of my T-Mobile Dash, I couldn't take the fact that, because it was Winders Mobile, it re-booted itself several times a day. No surprise this statistic:

Smartphones running Linux look set to become far more commonplace within the next five years, market watcher ABI Research has forecast.

The firm's VP, Stuart Carlaw, reckons that Linux will feature on 23 per cent of smartphones by 2013. He added that that share of the market will put the open source operating system in second place in the smartphone popularity stakes, putting it behind Symbian and ahead of Microsoft's Windows Mobile worldwide.

Combine the move to Linux by companies like Nokia with Palm going to Linux for the next version of its OK and perhaps we'll see fewer WinMobile phones.