While the focus of the diminution of the desktop machine in modern usage in favor of various mobile devices has been on the potential effects on Microsoft and its dominant Windows operating system platform, there is every likelihood that the Linux desktop platform will suffer as well. You already get some sense of this just reading various industry rags… where two or three years ago it was hard to make it through the week without seeing another Windows vs. Linux debate in the press, today it's hard to find much fervor either way. Most of the combatants have gone out and bought iPhones, it seems.
To whatever extent Linux was always a sort of itch scratching self motivated phenomena carried by various geeks with their own interests, it probably didn't have a lot to worry about, but now it is getting a breath of support from the very mobile device manufacturers that may be supplanting it as a computing focus. Samsung and Nokia have announced additional support for kernel development.