People often search, Which is the most popular operating system for mobile devices? Which operating system is the best in Mobile? What are the most used operating systems for mobile? And so on…
As of late the cell phones, tablets and wearables have overwhelmed the world. These devices are essentially affecting our lives and are indeed reclassifying the manner in which we access data and speak with others. This is due to not only the hardware but the specialized software that these devices run and most importantly, their operating system (OS) known as Mobile Operating System. Actually like a PC can run on various OS’s or various renditions of a similar OS, most mobile devices likewise run on different Mobile Operating Systems which is the foundation of the entire working of these devices.
By mobile devices we not only are considering all the smartphones, we are also taking into consideration the smart wearables including smartwatches and even car infotainment.
Table of Content:
What is a Mobile OS?
A mobile operating system is a foundation that allows you to run your favourite apps and programs on your mobile device like phones, tablets and other smart devices like wearable technology to run applications and other programs. Without the operating system, a phone would not look or feel the way it does to a user. It’s essentially the backbone for all of the capabilities of a mobile device.
It manages all the hardware and optimizes the efficacy of the application software in the device. Mobile OS not only manages phone access but also cellular and wireless network connectivity.
Some Popular Mobile Operating Systems
Android
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| Image via Android Operating System |
Android has been the best-selling OS worldwide on mobile phones since 2011 and on tablets since 2013. As of May 2021, it has over three billion monthly active users making it the largest installed base of any operating system.
It is based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open source software, designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. It is programmed in C, C++, Java and manufactured by Google Inc.
Wear OS - Wear OS (also known simply as Wear and formerly Android Wear) is a version of Google's Android operating system designed for smartwatches and other wearables. By pairing with mobile phones running Android version 6.0 or newer, or iOS version 10.0 or newer with limited support from Google's pairing application, Wear OS integrates Google Assistant technology and mobile notifications into a smartwatch form factor.
iOS
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| Image via iOS Operating System |
iOS (iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for Apple hardware. It has the second largest installed base worldwide on smartphones, but the largest profits, due to aggressive price competition between Android-based manufacturers.
It’s one of the special operating systems for mobile devices specially designed and developed for the use of Apple devices like iPhone, iPad & iPod, etc. It's programmed in C, C++, Objective-C and Swift.
Although iOS is not the best at everything, it offers the best package of mobile functions. Still in comparison, iPhone has best in-camera features, video recordings with slow motions [up to 60 frames per sec.] and till now it holds the best music producing tech specifications. If we neglect its price, then this is one of the best trading phones out in the market and that is why it is still giving the fight to Android.
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| Image via Apple WatchOS |
The Apple Watch accounts for 41% share of the smartwatch market and 17% share of all wearables.
Tizen OS
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| Image via Tizen OS |
Tizen OS has been around for a long while. It is for the most part viewed as the working framework that Samsung has fabricated its wearable gadgets on, however that just tells part of the story. Tizen is indeed a diverse working framework. That is to say, it's a center OS that has various forms, contingent upon what gadget it's on.
It's built on Linux base framework, as so many of the present different working frameworks, and it's so adaptable it can be used on smartphones, smartwatches/wearables, in-car infotainment systems and TVs, among other devices with screens (even fridge-freezers).
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| Image via Tizen Wearables |
The lightweight version of this operating system is called: Tizen for Wearables and is led by Samsung. Tizen for Wearables is an open-source OS and can run standalone apps (without any connection to a host app on a smartphone) which is quite unique for wearable operating systems, it can also run integrated apps and linked apps.
MIUI
MIUI is a modified Android ROM developed by electronics manufacturer Xiaomi for its smartphones. This is a fork of the Android OS.
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| Image via MIUI |
Although the MIUI is built on the Android platform, the default user interface of its earlier iterations resembled iOS. Other iOS similarities include the app icons being in a uniform shape, the dialer and in-call interface.
Another difference from Android is the MIUI's support for themes and custom fonts. Users can download theme packs and fonts, which can change the user interface of the device once installed from the Mi Themes Store. It allows advanced users to tweak the hard-coded firmware of their handsets.
Harmony OS
Huawei’s HarmonyOS is designed for the Internet-of-Things era, with the ability to run on everything from smartphones and tablets to home appliances.
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| Image via Harmony_OS |
In a multi-kernel design, the operating system selects suitable kernels from the abstraction layer for devices with diverse resources. For IoT devices, the system is known to be based on LiteOS; while for smartphones and tablets, it is based on a Linux kernel and has used the open-source Android code to support running Android apps, in addition to HarmonyOS apps.
Mobile OS Market Share
1. Mobile phones
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| Market Share of Smartphone OS |
As can be inferred from the chart above Android OS grabs the largest part of the smartphone market followed by iOS. These two remain to be the most versatile mobile OS due to popularity.
2. Smart devices
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| Market Share of Smart Devices OS |
Conclusion
In this blog we have basically told you about the different mobile devices OS and their current market shares.
There are other mobile devices working frameworks which will be coming in the future to battle against these best ones. A portion of those are; Firefox OS, Ubuntu Phone OS, Open WebOS, Jolla Sailfish, Amazon Fire OS and significantly more. A greater part of them is in the developing stage and running in Linux based platforms like Android.
Among the all above best known versatile working frameworks list, Android is the most well known mobile OS working framework, and the second-greatest tech organization Operating framework is Apple's iOS. These two working frameworks are basically used in every other smartphone in the market.
