A Bugdroid bit an apple against a background of tiles (Mobile operating systems)

The market for mobile phones is huge and very obviously that directly makes the market for mobile operating systems also huge. With several players already in the market and others trying to get in with an attempt to penetrate this market, on most occasions smaller players end up failing or get bought out by larger players. Android has managed to capture a large portion of the smartphone market share at 84.4%, followed by Apple’s iOS at 11.7% and Windows Phone operating system at 2.9%, as of Q3, 2014 (IDC, 2014). All the major players are trying to eat into Android’s Market share and on the other hand Android is trying to capture the remaining 15.6%. Smartphone users consists of almost 40% (1.75 billion) of the total mobile market of 4.55 billions users.

Android became market leaders in 2010, overtaking Symbian OS that was developed and run by Nokia. Most of the mobile phones in the early 2000s ran on Symbian OS, until companies started to shift to other operating systems and for me, this is one of the major reasons for Nokia’s downfall as well. Nokia completely believed in their operating system and did not not shift from their outdated operating system like most of the others or massively change Symbian OS as they believed they were invincible until Android was developed and backed by one of the largest companies in the world, Google. Since 2010, Goggle has never looked back and has constantly kept increasing its market share, with most of the mobile companies shifting to Android as their preferred operating system. The android operating system caters extremely well to all its clients, especially the ones that need a large amount of software backing to their massive hardware technological developments like Samsung and HTC. Keeping in mind that Samsung plans on launching and running their own operating system (Tizen) on all their devices, the paradigm shift is going to be interesting as Samsung is the leading smartphone mobile phone provider in the world with 23.7% market share of the total smartphone mobile phone industry and 28% market share of android devices.

Apple’s IOS was developed and released in 2007, around the same time as Android. It’s a known fact that IOS is only available to Apple phones, unlike all its other competitors and from the looks of it I don’t think that’s ever going to change. IOS has never managed to become world market leaders and if they keeping playing the same game that they have been playing, it doesn't seem like its ever going happen. Apple believes in targeting only the rich and the upper middle class with their phones in the highest price-range segment, making the phone a “status symbol”. On their best day, Apple has only 5 varieties of phones that a user can purchase and the major difference between those phones would be the thickness and the speed, with a few additional features like Touch ID and Apple pay. Without a doubt IOS is the most user friendly and seamless operating system, but the baggage that comes along is too much including an extremely hefty price and I don’t think the world is ready yet for curved phones.

The Windows operating system, that mainly runs on Windows Phones (formerly known as Nokia) and my personal favourite. Very obviously I use a Windows Phone, and am extremely proud of it but shockingly have to keep justifying the reason to other people. On most occasions the debate ends at the Windows Phones’ app store, without even moving on to talk about its user interface, camera or Mix radio. The Windows’ operating system provides an extremely easy user interface with some great features, like free latest downloadable music. Even though I'm a huge believer in Windows Phones, I'm not blind. The Windows phone operating system does have a few issues besides its widely spoken lack of applications, the tendency of freezing/hanging that is also an added feature on most Android devices, but that barely exists on the iPhone. Now getting to the main reason for the lack of belief people have in the Windows phone operating system, “limited applications”, the Windows phone app store has more than 300,000 application that accounts to one fourth of the applications on IOS or the Google play store but its growing and improving at an extremely fast pace and plan on reaching a respectable position very soon

When comparing all the three major operating systems, the android operating system is not the most user friendly and could take a few days or for some a few weeks to figure it out but for a very few after shifting to a new phone, unlike the IOS and windows phone operating systems. But again, one of the main reasons being, excessive functionality on a phone, which is always a good thing. Siri that was introduced in 2011 with the iPhone 4S, one of the first and most successful personal assistant on a mobile phone device is massively losing out to Google Now and Cortana. The iPhone was known for its almost lifelike application buttons on its user interface, which lost its way massively after iOS7. Introduction of iOS 7 and iOS 8 brought a lot of colour to the user interface instead of actual enhancement like the most recent Android lollipop and the Windows phone 8.1.

To conclude, I feel Android needs to make their UI a little more user friendly and try to work out a similar user experience across all mobile phone price segments, while Apple needs to stop focusing completely on the looks and move a little towards functionality and make Apple as the company it used to be, I don't think I can stand another keynote with Tim Cook saying, “One more thing.. the slimmest and fastest iPhone till date”. Windows is going down the right part with the windows phone, especially now with the hardware sector under its control as well, I think they should focus on making sure they have a device that seamlessly works and also wirelessly connects with other devices over platforms like Miracast or Airplay and very obviously improve their applications and sign in more developers for those application fanatics.