Right now the mobile
operating system wars have only two main combatants: Apple's iOS and Google's
Android.
IOS is well-known as
the platform Apple uses for its ever-popular iPhone and iPad devices. Android
appears on a huge range of devices from different vendors, ranging from
Motorola's Droid series to Samsung's Galaxy phones and tablets to HTC's
Thunderbolt LTE smartphone. According to the latest Nielsen numbers,
Android-based devices now account for 43% of American smartphones in use today
while the iPhone accounts for 28% of American smartphones in use today and
RIM's BlackBerry OS devices account for 18% of the market. What's more,
Android's adoption rate has been accelerating as 56% of users who reported
buying a new smartphone in the past three months purchased an Android device.
By comparison, 28% reported purchasing an Apple iPhone while just 9% of recent
smartphone buyers reported purchasing one of Research in Motion's BlackBerry devices.
So since Android is
currently the top dog, let's look where it's headed in the near future. Google
will soon release its Google Nexus Prime smartphone that features Android 4.0,
a.k.a. "Ice Cream Sandwich," that is designed to unify the Android
platform for use on both tablets and smartphones. Scott Main, the lead tech
writer for Google's Android Developers Blog, last month started prepping
developers for the impending release of Ice Cream Sandwich and reminded them
that the new Android will "support big screens, small screens and
everything in between." Main also emphasized that Android would maintain
"the same version ... on all screen sizes" going forward. Put another
way, this could mean that the era of Android fragmentation will soon end if
Google is successful.
As for iOS, Apple just
released its iOS 5 update this past month to go along with its new iPhone 4S.
Key features include Notification Center, a new app that lets you manage all
your notifications "in one place and without interruption" and the iMessage
service that can be used to send SMS, pictures and videos to fellow iOS 5
users. Apple is also touting improvements to iOS's photo editing capabilities,
its Safari browser, and its integration capabilities with Twitter. Apple's
mobile operating system is also now supporting the iCloud online data storage
and syncing service, and Siri, a voice-enabled "personal assistant"
that can interpret your speech patterns and provide you answers to your
questions just by asking it in a natural voice.
So we know now how the
two mobile OS titans have been doing, but what about their competitors? RIM has
been taking its time in developing its new QNX operating system for its next
generation of smartphones, due to be released next year. RIM gave QNX a test
spin on its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, although the general consensus has been
that the PlayBook was rushed to market and that it lacked even basic features
such as access to corporate email that isn't dependent on owning a BlackBerry
smartphone. RIM has seemingly learned its lessons and is making sure that when
it releases its QNX smartphones they'll be ready from Day One.
Microsoft, meanwhile,
has rolled out its Windows Phone 7.5 platform, a.k.a., "Mango," that
features new multitasking capabilities, Bing's Local Scout feature and a new
messaging system that integrates text messages, Facebook chat and Windows Live
Messenger. While Microsoft's mobile OS is expected to get a boost once Nokia
starts pushing out its Windows Phone devices in the near future, the operating
system seems stuck in fourth place behind iOS, Android and BlackBerry for the
foreseeable future. There are worse fates than this, of course, since
Microsoft's muscle will probably prevent Windows Phone from going the way of
other defunct mobile operating systems such as Symbian and WebOS.
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