What is Mobile Operating System (Mobile OS)?

The gap between Smartphones and Computers has reduced drastically since past few years. There’s almost nothing which you can do on a Computer but not on a Smartphone. Or is there? The reason being the constant evolution in mobile technology. This gap between Smartphones and Computers started filling out when smartphone were born. Smartphones replaced Cellphones. How did that happen? Cellphones became smartphones with the introduction of Mobile Operating System or Mobile OS. But what is Mobile Operating System? Let’s find out.

A Mobile Operating System or Mobile OS is an Operating System which is developed especially for a smartphone or a tablet or any other handheld device. It allows smartphones, tablets to run applications and programs. There is no big difference between PC Operating System and Mobile Operating System. However, there are a few additional features in Mobile OS like Cellular Connectivity, GPS Mobile navigation, Near Field Communication, Infrared Blaster, and Fingerprint Sensor. 

Some Popular Mobile OS

There are various Mobile OS currently available in the market out of which the following three are the most popular ones:

• Google’s Android: Android is a mobile operating system developed by Google. It is based on Linux kernel and its source code is released by Google under open source licenses. Android, Inc. was originally founded by Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears and Chris White in October, 2003. Google, later on in the month of July 2005, acquired Android, Inc for around $50 million. The latest version of Android is Android 7.1.1 Nougat.

• Apple’s iOS: iOS is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple, Inc. iOS was first unveiled with the introduction of iPhone in 2007 by Steve Jobs. iOS is available exclusively for Apple’s own hardware including the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Released on September 13, 2016, iOS 10 is the latest version of the Operating System.

• Microsoft’s Windows 10 Mobile: Windows 10 mobile is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft. It is the successor of Windows Phone 8.1 and is an edition of Windows 10 as per Microsoft’s plan to unify Windows across multiple device classes. 

Market Share

As far as the market share is concerned, Android is dominating with a market share of 87.8% all over the world while iOS has a share of 11.5% as on December 2016. Android and iOS together holds 99.3% of global market share whereas Microsoft’s Windows 10 Mobile has a market share of only 0.4%, which helps it to rank third in the statistics. 

I hope now you know what is mobile operating system. So which Mobile operating system are you on? Which one is your favorite Mobile OS and why is it so? Let’s have a discussion in the comments section below. And don’t forget to hit the share button on the left side of your screen.:)