History 1.

The increasing importance of mobile devices has triggered intense competition amongst software giants such as Google, Microsoft, and Apple, as well as mobile industry leaders Nokia, Research In Motion (RIM), and Palm, in a bid to capture the largest market share pre-emptively. 2. With the release of the iPhone in 2007, Apple significantly disrupted the mobile industry and effectively ushered in a new era of mobile operating systems for smart phones and other devices that focus on user experience and rely on finger-operated touch-based interaction. In November 2007, Google formed the Open Handset Alliance with 79 other hardware, software, and telecom companies to make inroads into the smart phone market through its new Android operating system. Popular Operating systems 3. Operating systems that can be found on smart phones, mobile OS-powered tablet computers, and other mobile devices include Google's Android, Apple's iOS, RIM's BlackBerry OS, Microsoft's Windows phone, Linux, HP's webOS, Samsung's Bada and Nokia's MeeGo among many others. Android, Bada, webOS and Maemo are built on top of Linux, and iOS is derived from the BSD and NeXTSTEP operating systems, which are all related to Unix. Mobile platforms 4. There are two generations of mobile platforms: legacy platforms and nextgeneration platforms. (a) Legacy platforms originate from products built to the requirements of the 2000-2009 decade. These include Symbian, BlackBerry OS, BREW and Windows Mobile. (b) Next-generation platforms are heavily influenced by the groundbreaking iOS platform, and are designed ground-up for the requirements of the Internet age and developer economics. These include Android, webOS, Windows Phone and Bada.

Fig 1:Smartphone operating systems' market share