For the first quarter of 2011, the mobile software climate has been changing. The leaders of the past have been Symbian and the Blackberry mobile operating system; “OS”. There has been a changing of the guard for the last three months.
For the first quarter of 2011, the Android system has been powering up to the top of the list of mobile operating systems in the world. They passed by everyone, including the past reigning champion, Symbian. Currently Android is being activated on 400,000 devices, including smartphones, daily. That is 4.63 activations per second. This is even though Android appears to quickly suck the life out of batteries when run on 4G networks. They came from last to first in record time. The market share for Android is 35 percent, up from 30 percent at the end of last year.
Who comes in second in the world of mobile control ? Symbian has that honor. They were displaced as the reigning champion and now they take 25 percent market share. At the end of 2010 Symbian had 32 percent market share. Nokia was the main developer of the Symbian mobile operating system. Since Nokia has had their “burning platform” speech, things changed. Nokia now is focusing on the new partnership they have with Microsoft and hard at work developing for the Windows Phone 7 version called “Mango”. Symbian was put on the back burner by Nokia and is now in the hands of a third party named “Accenture”. With the transfer went 3000 employees who use to work for Nokia on Symbian.
Apple is bringing in third place for most market share. They moved up a bit from 16 percent to 18 percent. Apple still remains “the” mobile platform to design for, with developers choosing them over the Google Android platform. The iPhone jump over to Verizon helped them to gain a bit more market share and iPhones are starting to have an influence in the Asian markets as well. The name of the Apple mobile operating system is “iOS”.
In the fourth spot is the Blackberry “OS” mobile operating system. They remain unchanged from last year in their market share of 14 percent. They have recently adopted a new mobile operating system, buying out QNX. They installed it onto their tablet they call the “Playbook”. This same QNX system is one of the most stable operating systems in the world, running on trains, cars and even nuclear power stations. Look for a boost to the Blackberry name and market share when QNX also becomes available for smartphones. It will replace or meld with the “OS 7″ system, making one system for both tablets and smartphones.
