ABI says that in the coming years, Linux wars will see the open source heavyweights whittled down to just two: the LiMo Foundation and Google’s Android, with other variants like Nokia’s Maemo carving out niches with particular form factors.

Perhaps the most interesting bit of the report is its predictions for the future of Symbian: “ABI Research found that Nokia’s poor position in the Americas resulted in a 2007 share of only 4 percent for Symbian in the American smartphone market. It is imperative that Symbian looks to grow its share of the North American market by gaining more traction from other handset vendors that are performing well there. Otherwise, the company could face a situation whereby its leadership in the European markets is challenged by a combination of a resurgent Windows and emerging Linux, while simultaneously being locked out of the North American market.”

It’s going to be a tough call for Symbian – it’s always been haunted by the shadow of Nokia, which owns most of the company, and it seems that most other handset makers have dabbled with the Symbian operating system but preferred to stick with old favourites like their own proprietary software for the bulk of their handsets. It looks like Symbian better start hoping Nokia can get its act together and start shifting some serious volume in the states.

The US operator announced last week that it’s going to be taking up the final seat on the LiMo Foundation’s board and will join the likes of Motorola, Vodafone and NEC as members of the Foundation in promoting an open Linux distribution for mobile phones.

However, according to The Register, Verizon hasn’t said it’s will shun Android entirely (a Verizon exec told the site “We do believe that we will also offer devices with the Android OS”), more that they just prefer the collaborative nature of the Foundation to an OS developed and run by a single company.

While Verizon Wireless would be daft to block any particular OS from its shelves, you can’t help but feel it won’t exactly be giving pride of place to Android now it’s dubbed LiMo as its preferred OS. It’s not the first time the question of openness has cropped up between the two either, but previously it was Google banging the openness gong: Google filed a submission with the FCC asking the regulator to make sure that Verizon Wireless stuck to the open access pledges it made after it won a slice of the 700Mhz spectrum in the US auction earlier this year.

ABI says that the new acceptance for Linux will be spawned by the likes of Google’s Android, the work of the LiMo Foundation as well as Nokia’s acquisition of Trolltech, and in the future, take-up of open source operating systems will come from handset makers who want to “bring content-rich environments to users who currently utilize mid-tier devices” and get their customers using more web-based applications.

It does certainly seem like there’s a bit of momentum getting up around the mobile Linux world, not least thanks to enthusiasm for mobile virtualisation. Linux seems to have struggled on the PC due to a lack of big name support, as well as battling one single entrenched platform in the form of Windows – not problems mobile Linux seems to have.