Typical examples of devices running a mobile operating system are smartphones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), tablet computers and information appliances, or what are sometimes referred to as smart devices, which may also include embedded systems, or other mobile devices and wireless devices.
History
The increasing importance of mobile devices has triggered intense competition amongst software giants such as Google, Microsoft, and Apple, as well as mobile industry leaders Nokia, Research In Motion (RIM), and Palm, in a bid to capture the largest market share pre-emptively.
With the release of the iPhone in 2007, Apple significantly disrupted the mobile industry and effectively ushered in a new era of mobile operating systems for smartphones and other devices that focus on user experience and rely on finger-operated touch-based interaction. In November 2007, Google formed the Open Handset Alliance with 79 other hardware, software, and telecom companies to make inroads into the smartphone market through its new Android operating system.Though its reception was mainly positive from the media and public, the release of Android created a rift between Apple and Google, eventually leading to the resignation of Google's ex-CEO, Eric Schmidt, from Apple's board of directors.
Since the launch of both Apple's iOS and Google's Android, the smartphone market has exploded in popularity and in May 2010 accounted for more than 17.3% of all mobile phones sold. This has led to greater consumer awareness of the various mobile operating systems, with telecoms and manufacturers regularly advertising the advantages of their OS. As of January 2011, Google holds 33.3% of the smartphone market worldwide, demonstrating amazing growth for Android which held only 4.7% a year earlier. Nokia, Apple, RIM, and Microsoft hold 31%, 16.2%, 14.6%, and 3.1% respectively.
Market projection
Mobile platforms are in the nascent stage and any projection regarding market growth is hard to make at the present time. However, a clear trend is the surging growth of mobile operating systems which are developed for smart devices, rather than for feature phones. As of February 2011, Nokia has announced a partnership with Microsoft which effectively ends the development of Symbian OS, the most popular feature phone OS, by the end of 2011 in favor of Windows Phone.
It is noteworthy that Intel is taking the initiative to focus on portable devices other than mobile phones. They are Mobile Internet Devices (MID) and Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC). Meantime, Palm abandoned its plan to develop Foleo, which was to be a companion device for a smartphone.
Mobile navigation
Canalys has estimated that in 2009 the installed base of smartphones with integrated GPS was 163 million units worldwide, of which Nokia accounted for more than half (51%), having shipped cumulatively 83 million GPS devices. On January 22, 2010, Nokia released a free version of Ovi Maps in an effort to increase its number of users.
Popular operating systems
Operating systems that can be found on smartphones, mobile OS-powered tablet computers, and other mobile devices include Google's Android, Apple's iOS, RIM's BlackBerry OS, Microsoft's Windows Phone, Linux, HP's webOS, Samsung's Bada, and Nokia's MeeGo among many others. Android, Bada, webOS and Maemo are built on top of Linux, and iOS is derived from the BSD and NeXTSTEP operating systems, which are all related to Unix.
Common software platforms
The most common mobile operating systems are:
Android from Google Inc. (closed source)
See also: Comparison of Android devices
Android was developed by a small startup company that was purchased by Google Inc., and Google continues to update the software. Android is a Linux-derived OS backed by Google, along with major hardware and software developers (such as Intel, HTC, ARM, Samsung, Motorola and eBay, to name a few), that form the Open Handset Alliance. Released on November 5th 2007, the OS received praise from a number of developers upon its introduction.[8] Android releases prior to 2.0 (1.0, 1.5, 1.6) were used exclusively on mobile phones. Most Android phones, and some Android tablets, now use a 2.x release. Android 3.0 was a tablet-oriented release and does not officially run on mobile phones. The current Android version is 4.0. Android releases are nicknamed after sweets or dessert items like Cupcake (1.5), Frozen Yogurt (2.2), Honeycomb (3.0), and Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0). Most major mobile service providers carry an Android device. Since the HTC Dream was introduced, there has been an explosion in the number of devices that carry Android OS. From Q2 of 2009 to the second quarter of 2010, Android's worldwide market share rose 850% from 1.8% to 17.2%.
The Apple iPad tablet computer uses a version of iOS.
BlackBerry OS from RIM (closed source, proprietary)
This OS is focused on easy operation and was originally designed for business. Recently it has seen a surge in third-party applications and has been improved to offer full multimedia support. Currently Blackberry's App World has over 15,000 downloadable applications. RIM's future strategy will focus on the newly acquired QNX, having already launched the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet running a version of QNX and expecting the first QNX smartphones in early 2012.
iOS from Apple Inc. (closed source, proprietary)
The Apple iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, and second-generation Apple TV all use an operating system called iOS, which is derived from Mac OS X. Native third party applications were not officially supported until the release of iOS 2.0 on July 11th 2008. Before this, "jailbreaking" allowed third party applications to be installed, and this method is still available. Currently all iOS devices are developed by Apple and manufactured by Foxconn or another of Apple's partners.
Symbian OS from the Symbian Foundation (open public license)
See also: Comparison of Symbian devices
Symbian has the largest share in most markets worldwide, but lags behind other companies in the relatively small but highly visible North American market. This matches the success of Nokia in all markets except Japan. In Japan Symbian is strong due to a relationship with NTT DoCoMo, with only one of the 44 Symbian handsets released in Japan coming from Nokia. It has been used by many major handset manufacturers, including BenQ, Fujitsu, LG, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sharp, and Sony Ericsson. Current Symbian-based devices are being made by Fujitsu, Nokia, Samsung, Sharp, and Sony Ericsson. Prior to 2009 Symbian supported multiple user interfaces, i.e. UIQ from UIQ Technologies, S60 from Nokia, and MOAP from NTT DOCOMO. As part of the formation of the Symbian OS in 2009 these three UIs were merged into a single OS which is now fully open source. Recently, though shipments of Symbian devices have increased, the operating system's worldwide market share has declined from over 50% to just over 40% from 2009 to 2010. Nokia handed the development of Symbian to Accenture, which will continue to support the OS until 2016.
The Palm Pre running HP (formerly Palm) webOS. HP purchased Palm in 2010.
Windows Phone from Microsoft (closed source, proprietary)
See also: List of Windows Phone devices
On February 15th, 2010, Microsoft unveiled its next-generation mobile OS, Windows Phone. The new mobile OS includes a completely new over-hauled UI inspired by Microsoft's "Metro Design Language". It includes full integration of Microsoft services such as Windows Live, Zune, Xbox Live and Bing, but also integrates with many other non-Microsoft services such as Facebook and Google accounts. The new software platform has received some positive reception from the technology press.
webOS from HP (certain parts open sourced)
webOS is a proprietary mobile operating system running on the Linux kernel, initially developed by Palm, which launched with the Palm Pre. After being acquired by HP, two phones (the Veer and the Pre 3) and a tablet (the TouchPad) running webOS were introduced in 2011. On August 18th, 2011, HP announced that webOS hardware is discontinued but HP will continue to support and update webOS software and develop the webOS ecosystem.
Other software platforms
GridOS from Fusion Garage
GridOS was built using open source code from the Android kernel. It is used as the operating system of the Grid 4 mobile phone and Grid 10 tablet, which are due to start shipping September 15th 2011.
BlackBerry Tablet OS from QNX Software System/RIM (closed source, proprietary)
BlackBerry Tablet OS is based on QNX. QNX is a commercial Unix-like real-time operating system, aimed primarily at the embedded systems market. The product was originally developed by Canadian company, QNX Software Systems, which was later acquired by BlackBerry-producer Research In Motion. This OS is primary for BlackBerry Playbook (tablet).
BlackBerry BBX from RIM
BlackBerry BBX is the next generation platform for BlackBerry smartphones and tablets. In other words, there will be only one OS for both Blackberry smartphones and tablets going forward.
SHR (community-driven)
SHR is a GNU/Linux based operating system for smartphones and similar mobile devices. It integrates various Free and Open Source Software projects into a versatile platform - flexible enough to run on a vast selection of mobile hardware such as the Openmoko Neo Freerunner, Nokia N900, Palm Pre and variants, T-Mobile G1, HTC HD2, iPhone 3Gs and more. The SHR build system is based on OpenEmbedded - well known from the Yocto project. For telephony, networking, etc. freesmartphone.org framework is used. On top of that an easy to use graphical interface centered around Enlightenment libraries is used to provide phone calls, messaging and pim. A growing amount of available applications offers SHR users with everything expected on a smartphone. But also numerous classical programs well known from other Linux distros can be made available easily.
SHR is 100% community driven and based on Free and Open Source Software. This empowers everybody to realize their innovations or add support for new hardware - without needing to ask some CEO or strategy manager first.
MeeGo from non-profit organization The Linux Foundation (open source, GPL)
At the 2010 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Nokia and Intel both unveiled 'MeeGo' a brand new mobile operating system which would combine the best of Moblin and the best of Maemo to create a truly open-sourced experience for users across all devices. As of 2011, Nokia has announced that it will no longer be pursuing MeeGo and will instead adopt Windows Phone 7 as its primary mobile OS. Nokia announced the Nokia N9 on June 21, 2011 at the Nokia Connection event in Singapore. The phone is presumed to become available to the public in September 2011. LG announced its support for the platform.
bada from Samsung Electronics (closed source, proprietary)
This is a mobile operating system being developed by Samsung Electronics. Samsung claims that bada will rapidly replace its proprietary feature phone platform, converting feature phones to smartphones.The name 'bada' is derived from 바다, the Korean word for ocean or sea. The first device to run bada is called 'Wave' and was unveiled to the public at Mobile World Congress 2010. The Wave is a fully touchscreen phone running the new mobile operating system. With the phone, Samsung also released an app store, called Samsung Apps, to the public. It has close to 3000 mobile applications.
Samsung has said that they don't see Bada as a smartphone operating system, but as an OS with a kernel configurable architecture, which allows the use of either a proprietary real-time operating system, or the Linux kernel. Though Samsung plans to install bada on many phones, the company still has a large lineup of Android phones.
Linux based operating system (open source, GPL)
Linux is strongest in China where it is used by Motorola, and in Japan, used by DoCoMo. Rather than being an OS in its own right, Linux is used as a basis for a number of different operating systems developed by several vendors, including Android, GridOS, B2G, LiMo, Maemo, MeeGo, Openmoko and Qt Extended, which are mostly incompatible. PalmSource (now Access) is moving towards an interface running on Linux. Another software platform based on Linux is being developed by Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic, Samsung, and Vodafone.
Brew from Qualcomm
Brew is used by a some mobile phone manufacturers and mobile networks, however most often the end-user does not know this since mobile phones running Brew most often lack any Brew branding. Brew runs in the background with the custom "skins" of the mobile phone manufacturer or operator on-top. Brew is used by Sprint Nextel, metroPCS, U.S. Cellular and Verizon in the US and by the Three network in much of Europe, the UK and Australia on many mobile phones produced especially for their network. Manufacturers such as Huawei, INQ Mobile, Amoi, and Samsung Mobile amongst others use Brew in some of their mobile phones and it is featured in Three UK phones such as the 3 Skypephone, INQ1 and Huawei u7510 (3 Touch). Two of HTC's mobile phones use Brew's successor Brew MP.
LiMo 4 from LiMo Foundation
LiMo Foundation launched LiMo 4 on 14 february 2011, the latest release of the LiMo Platform. LiMo 4 delivers complete middleware and base application functionality, including a flexible user interface, extended widget libraries, 3D window effects, advanced multimedia, social networking and location based service frameworks, sensor frameworks, multi-tasking and multi-touch capabilities. In addition, support for scalable screen resolution and consistent APIs means that the platform can deliver a consistent user experience across a broad range of device types and form factors[32]
Historical software platforms
Maemo from Nokia (open source, GPL)
Maemo is a software platform developed by Nokia for smartphones and Internet tablets. It is based on the Debian operating system.
Maemo is mostly based on open source code, and has been developed by Maemo Devices within Nokia in collaboration with many open source projects such as the Linux kernel, Debian and GNOME.
Maemo is based on Debian GNU/Linux and draws much of its GUI, frameworks and libraries from the GNOME project. It uses the Matchbox window manager and the GTK-based Hildon as its GUI and application framework.
Windows Mobile from Microsoft[6][33] (closed source, proprietary)
The Windows CE operating system and Windows Mobile middleware are widely spread in Asia. The two improved variants of this operating system, Windows Mobile 6 Professional (for touch screen devices) and Windows Mobile 6 Standard, were unveiled in February 2007. It has been criticized for having a user interface which is not optimized for touch input by fingers; instead, it is more usable with a stylus. However, unlike iPhone OS, it does support both touch screen and physical keyboard configurations.
Windows Mobile's market share has sharply declined in recent years to just 5% in Q2 of 2010. Microsoft is phasing out the Windows Mobile OS to specialized markets and is instead focusing on its new operating system and software platform, Windows Phone.
Palm OS/Garnet OS from Access Co. (closed source, proprietary)
webOS was introduced by Palm in January 2009 as the successor to Palm OS with Web 2.0 technologies, open architecture, and multitasking capabilities.
DangerOS from Danger, Inc. (closed source, proprietary)
DangerOS was a largely Java-based operating system for the Danger Hiptop line of smartphones produced by Danger Incorporated from 2002 to 2010, also sold as the T-Mobile Sidekick. In 2008, Danger, Inc. was acquired by Microsoft. Former Danger, Inc. employees were tasked to work on the Microsoft Kin line of phones, and in 2010 DangerOS was discontinued as a smartphone platform after the Kin phones were released. In 2011 T-Mobile introduced a new smartphone using the Sidekick branding based on Google's Android platform, with no relation to the previous Danger Hiptop phones.
Future software platforms
Boot 2 Gecko from non-profit organization Mozilla Foundation (open source, GPL)
According to Ars Technica, "Mozilla says that B2G is motivated by a desire to demonstrate that the standards-based open Web has the potential to be a competitive alternative to the existing single-vendor application development stacks offered by the dominant mobile operating systems."
Aliyun OS from Alibaba/AliCloud (cloud based)
AliCloud's operating system revolves around the idea of bringing cloud functionality to the mobile platform. According to the company, Aliyun will feature cloud-based e-mail, Web search, weather updates, and GPS navigation tools. In addition, the operating system will synchronize and store call data, text messages, and photos in the cloud for access across other devices, including PCs. Alibaba says it will offer customers 100GB of storage at launch. the operating system would allow users to access applications from the Web, rather than download apps to their devices.[39]
Tizen from non-profit organization The Linux Foundation (open source, GPL)
Tizen is an open source project hosted by the Linux Foundation, with Intel and Samsung leading its development steering group, and support from the LiMo Foundation. According to Intel, Tizen “combines the best of LiMo and MeeGo." HTML5 apps will be emphasized for the new OS, with the MeeGo project encouraging its members to transition to Tizen, stating that the "future belongs to HTML5-based applications, outside of a relatively small percentage of apps, and we are firmly convinced that our investment needs to shift toward HTML5." Tizen will be targeted at a variety of platforms such as handsets, tablets, smart TVs and in-vehicle entertainment. The initial release of Tizen is targeted for Q1 2012, with the first devices using the OS planned to reach the market in mid 2012.
Meltemi from Nokia (open source, GPL)
Meltemi is an open source project hosted by Nokia
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