Untrue. Many of the various Linux distributions could be considered bloatware, but the Linux kernel itself is remarkably trim, even comparing against many of the microkernel competitors that have come up against it over the years. For the variety of services it provides, Linux has held up quite well over the years, and if you want to make a really thin distribution, it is easy to do so... The real problem, of course, is that companies don't want to distribute devices (like cellphones) with minimal, efficient operating systems; they want to deliver products jam-packed with eye candy and whizz-bang apps. There's a reason why iOS and WP7 have been avoiding multitasking; they've crammed so much unnecessary appware into their OSs, you can't really allow two processes to run without saturating the CPU. :P Here's another take: Android is for Apple haters who secretly crave the iPhone, iOS is a toy for people with way way too much money to spend, RIM is an ancient forgotten technology being rediscovered by adolescents who like to text too much (just heard a report on this on the BBC!), WP is the latest failure by an operating systems company suffering under the mistaken belief that it knows how to innovate, Symbian is probably the last holdout from the time when the primary purpose of a cell phone operating system was actually to place phone calls, not run apps, and MeeGo -- well, in my opinion, MeeGo is actually an idea some years ahead of its time. Unix (in a variety of flavors) today dominates the workstation and embedded markets, and is making serious inroads into the supercomputer world. With Linux and OS X, it is beginning to make serious inroads into the personal computer market as well. And, of course, under Android, it is (in a crippled form) working its way swiftly into the cell phone market. The cellular world may still shy away from the full and open version of Unix today, but I think it only makes sense that something like MeeGo will eventually take root here as well.