Demystifying mobile operating systems…

Similar to the way that your laptop or PC needs an operating system to run, your mobile phone also needs an operating system (OS).  An operating system is really the link between the hardware and the software that enables the installed programs to run on that computer/mobile phone.  On a laptop or PC, the primary operating systems are Windows (Microsoft), Linux and Apple.  On the mobile phone, there are quite a few more options.  Here is the blonde’s summary of mobile phone operating systems:

Symbian OS. This is one of my favourite operating systems because it is stable and very reliable.  Symbian is extremely popular, boasting 50.3% global market share in Q2 2009.  Developed by the Symbian Foundation and partly owned by Nokia, Symbian is a very dominant player.  Quite a few handset manufacturers have Symbian phones: LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson among others.

RIM (Research In Motion) BlackBerry OS: This operating system is only used on BlackBerry phones and was originally designed for business users.  The great thing about his OS is that it allows for the BlackBerry compression service which enables users to browse the Internet and send/receive email through the BlackBerry service very quickly and on the BlackBerry data plan.  As at Q2 2009, this OS had 20.9% global market share.

Apple iPhone OS.  This is a mobile derivative of the Apple Mac OS X and is the operating system that runs on iPhones and the newly launched iPad.  The great thing about this OS is that Apple made their development information available to third parties so that they could create applications for the iPhone/iPad.  At present the iTunes application store has hundreds of thousands of applications available. By Q2 2009, iPhone OS had 13.7% market share.

Windows Mobile.  Largely considered a dismal failure, Microsoft’s mobile operating system has not met with the same popularity as their PC operating system.  The software is unreliable, crashes often and is limited to Microsoft programs.  With the launch of other smart phones and open source software, Microsoft’s market share took a serious knock and by Q2 2009 was only at 9%.  Windows Mobile software has been available on certain HTC phones, Samsung Omnia and others.  At the Mobile World Congress in 2010, Microsoft announced their new mobile OS called Windows Mobile 7 Series and a rather aggressive comeback into the mobile market.  It is still highly debatable as to whether Microsoft stands any chance of gaining more market share with this new OS but we’ll just have to wait and see…

Android. This relatively new OS already had a 2.8% market share by Q2 in 2009, but the popularity of the software has seen such tremendous growth that their market share could be significantly higher today.  Android is an open source software platform (open source means that there are no licensing fees – as with a closed source platform like Microsoft, and that the source code for the software is available to other developers to use and improve.) derived from Linux. Google was a key player in advocating the android OS and launched a Google branded phone made by HTC called the Nexus One. This was Google’s first foray into hardware and has been very successful (although nothing comes close to the success enjoyed by iPhone!).  Android operating systems are growing in popularity and you will find phones from HTC, Samsung, LG, Motorola and Sony Ericsson. You can see a full list of phones at http://www.androidphones.com

Linux.  This open source platform is very popular on mobile devices in China and Japan.  It is used by quite a few vendors such as Android, LiMo, Maemo, Openmoxo and Qt Extended.

Maemo 5: is an open source Linux based operating system developed by Nokia for smart phones, netbooks and tablet PCs.  At the MWC 2010, however, they announced a joint venture with Intel where the two companies will support a Linux based operating system called MeeGo; which will be a combination of Maemo and Intel’s linux OS Moblin.

Palm webOS and Palm OS/ Garnet OS.  This operating system is not very common in South Africa where Palm devices are rare.  However the Palm handsets have made a big come back in the United States with the launch of the Palm Pre and Pixi – two very popular mobile phones.