538 Making Key Strategic Decisions computers that functioned using the UNIX operating system. While, in the 1970s, Bell Labs actually developed UNIX as an operating system for scientific applications, it later became an accepted standard for commercial applications. Platform independent, the operating system and its associated applications could run on a variety of manufacturers’ computers, creating both opportunities for users and competition within the computer industry. Users were no longer inexorably tied to one manufacturer. UNIX became the standard as companies moved into the 1990s. However, standards changed rapidly in the nineties, and UNIX has lost ground due to the development.
