windows and viruses

one of the argument provided of the defense of windows for the complaint that windows are prone to virus attack was that windows was the largest OS in terms of people using it. So any hacker wants to harm, cheat users, he would spend time and energy in creating virus, malware for an OS like windows where he has the opportunity to maximize his impact. Thats why there are fewer viruses for linux since nobody cares about that.

Real life is complex and doing controlled to prove such behavioral hypothesis is near to impossible. But this time we can possibly see a real world example where controlled experiment is being played out.

IPhone OS and android OS are taking leads in OS to be used in mobile phone, and later to possibly every other consumer electronics other than PC. If we take the current trend, we are pretty sure that in the next 3-5 years, number of people using these OS will be equivalent to number of people using Windows when Windows was quite prone to virus attack.

Hence if the initial logic is true, we shall see the increased attacks on devices containing these OS too. Android is linux based, so there is credibility of linux which Android will have to stand upto.

One can always argue that now OS makers are more aware of vulnerabilities in OS and have found ways to plug them , hence the attacks will reduce because of improved knowledge. I don't know of exact mechanism of development in this area, but from philosphical point of view, hackers will always find a way to find weakness in OS if they exist. If android and iPhone OS are designed in a manner that vulnerabilities don't exist then only these can be saved from hackers' action. So fingers crosses. Lets see the controlled experiment to begin.