Mobile operating system market share

Operating systems that can be found on smartphones include Nokia's Symbian OS, Apple's IOS, RIM's BlackBerry, Windows Phone, Linux, Palm Web OS, Google's Android and Nokia's Maemo. Android, WebOS and Maemo are in turn built on top of Linux, and the iPhone OS is derived from the BSD and Next Step operating systems, which all are related to Unix.
The most common operating systems (OS) used in smartphones by Q2 2009 sales are:

• Symbian OS from the Symbian Foundation (50.3% Market Share Sales Q2 2009) (open public license) 
• RIM BlackBerry OS (20.9% Market Share Sales Q2 2009)   (closed source, proprietary) 
• iOS from Apple Inc. (13.7% Market Share Sales Q2 2009) (closed source, proprietary) 
• Windows Phone from Microsoft (9% Market Share Sales Q2 2009) (closed source, proprietary) 
• Android from Google Inc. (2.8% Market Share Sales Q2 2009) (open source, GPL) 
• Linux operating system (open source, GPL) 
• Palm web OS from Palm Inc. and Palm OS/Garnet OS from Access Co. (closed source, proprietary) 
• bada from Samsung Electronics (closed source, proprietary) 
• MeeGo from Nokia and Intel (open source, GPL) 
• Maemo from Nokia (open source, GPL)

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Mobile operating system

A mobile operating system, also known as a mobile OS, a mobile platform, or a handheld operating system, is the operating system that controls a mobile device—similar in principle to an operating system such as Mac OS, Linux or Windows that controls a desktop computer or laptop. However, they are currently somewhat simpler, and deal more with the wireless versions of broadband and local connectivity, mobile multimedia formats, and different input methods.

The increasing importance of mobile devices has triggered intense competition among technology giants, like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Nokia in a bid to capture the bigger market share pre-emotively. Palm, Research In Motion and Ericsson are also significant firms in the mobile platform sector. In November 2007, Google formed a Linux-based open source alliance to make inroads into this mobile platform market, raising consumer awareness of the growing mobile platform frenzy.

Mobile platforms are in the nascent stage, and any projection regarding the market growth is hard to make at the present time. 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.

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