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==Challenges to Wintel domination== {| class="wikitable floatright" |+New shipments of personal computer operating systems (000s of units)<ref>https://business.columbia.edu/sites/default/files-efs/imce-uploads/CITI/Articles/978-1-4615-5483-7_10.pdf {{Bare URL PDF|date=May 2025}}</ref> !Operating system (vendor) !1990 !1992 |- |'''[[MS-DOS]] ([[Microsoft]])''' |'''11,648''' '''(of which 490 with Windows)''' |'''18,525''' '''(of which 11,056 with Windows)''' |- |'''[[PC DOS]] ([[IBM]])''' |'''3,031''' |'''2,315''' |- |'''[[DR DOS]] ([[Digital Research]]/[[Novell]])''' |'''1,737''' |'''1,617''' |- |[[Classic Mac OS|Macintosh System]] ([[Apple Inc.|Apple]]) |1,411 |2,570 |- |[[Unix]] (various) |357 |797 |- |[[OS/2]] (IBM/Microsoft) |0 |409 |- |Others ([[NEC]], [[Commodore International|Commodore]] etc.) |5,079 |4,458 |} By the late 1990s, the success of [[Microsoft Windows]] had driven rival commercial [[operating system]]s into near-extinction, and had ensured that the "IBM PC compatible" computer was the dominant [[computing platform]]. This meant that if a developer made their software only for the [[Wintel]] platform, they would still be able to reach the vast majority of computer users. The only major competitor to Windows with more than a few percentage points of [[market share]] was [[Apple Inc.]]'s [[Macintosh]]. The Mac started out billed as "the computer for the rest of us", but high prices and closed architecture drove the Macintosh into an education and [[desktop publishing]] niche, from which it only emerged in the mid-2000s. By the mid-1990s the Mac's market share had dwindled to around 5% and introducing a new rival operating system had become too risky a commercial venture. Experience had shown that even if an operating system was technically superior to Windows, it would be a failure in the market ([[BeOS]] and [[OS/2]] for example). In 1989, [[Steve Jobs]] said of his new [[NeXT]] system, "It will either be the last new hardware platform to succeed, or the first to fail."{{Citation needed|date=April 2018}} Four years later in 1993, NeXT announced it was ending production of the [[NeXTcube]] and porting [[NeXTSTEP]] to Intel processors. Very early on in PC history, some companies introduced their own XT-compatible [[chipset]]s. For example, [[Chips and Technologies]] introduced their [[NEAT chipset|82C100]] XT Controller which integrated and replaced six of the original XT circuits: one [[Intel 8237|8237]] DMA controller, one [[Intel 8253|8253]] interrupt timer, one [[Intel 8255|8255]] parallel interface controller, one [[Intel 8259|8259]] interrupt controller, one [[Intel 8284|8284]] clock generator, and one [[Intel 8288|8288]] bus controller. Similar non-Intel chipsets appeared for the AT-compatibles, for example OPTi's 82C206 or 82C495XLC which were found in many 486 and early Pentium systems.<ref name="Tooley2013">{{cite book|author=Mike Tooley|title=PC Based Instrumentation and Control|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=A__U9Kh5C-4C&pg=PA32|year=2005|publisher=Newness|edition=3rd|isbn=978-1-136-37449-4|page=32}}</ref> The x86 chipset market was very volatile though. In 1993, [[VLSI Technology]] had become the dominant market player only to be virtually wiped out by Intel a year later. Intel has been the uncontested leader ever since.<ref name="Mueller2011">{{cite book|author=Scott M. Mueller|title=Upgrading and Repairing PCs|year=2011|publisher=Que Publishing|isbn=978-0-13-268218-3|edition=20th|page=171}}</ref> As the "Wintel" platform gained dominance Intel gradually abandoned the practice of licensing its technologies to other chipset makers; in 2010 Intel was involved in litigation related to their refusal to license their processor bus and related technologies to other companies like [[Nvidia]].<ref>[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20010399-64.html Intel vs. Nvidia: The tech behind the legal case]</ref> Companies such as [[AMD]] and [[Cyrix]] developed alternative x86 CPUs that were functionally compatible with Intel's. Towards the end of the 1990s, AMD was taking an increasing share of the CPU market for PCs. AMD even ended up playing a significant role in directing the development of the x86 platform when its Athlon line of processors continued to develop the classic x86 architecture as Intel deviated with its [[NetBurst]] architecture for the Pentium 4 CPUs and the [[IA-64]] architecture for the [[Itanium]] set of server CPUs. AMD developed AMD64, the first major extension not created by Intel, which Intel later adopted as [[x86-64]]. During 2006 Intel began abandoning NetBurst with the release of their set of "Core" processors that represented a development of the earlier Pentium III. A major alternative to Wintel domination is the rise of alternative operating systems since the early 2000s, which marked as the start of the [[post-PC era]].{{cite needed|date=February 2022}} This would include both the rapid growth of the smartphones (using Android or iOS) as an alternative to the personal computer; and the increasing prevalence of Linux and Unix-like operating systems in the server farms of large corporations such as Google or Amazon.
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