The smartphone sphere is currently influenced
by three major mobile platforms: Apple's iPhone, Google’s Android and Microsoft
Windows platform. While there are other mobile OS such as Firefox OS and Blackberry
only these three mobile platforms mentioned previously has been able to conquer
90% of the smart phone and tablet market. Out of the several mobile handset
manufacturers such as Nokia, HTC, LG, Asus and Samsung most of these use these operating
systems on their devices. These systems have their own advantages and often it
becomes quite challenging to choose the exact platform a mobile user should entrust
on.
As per the market data, Android
phones lead the most shares due to the reason that there are several handset manufacturing
firms who have embraced the Google's platform. Indeed, firms like LG, HTC and
Samsung are part of the "Open Handset Alliance", which is a conglomerate
which develops the Android operating system in association. The greatest advantage
of Android is that it is open source software and there are multiple developers
and programmers who are using this in
addition it is fully integrated with Google and thereby the users who are
dependent on Google services this happens to be the suitable phone.
The Google
app store right now hosts thousands of free apps which is one of the major reasons
why most smartphone users prefer Android. On the other side, the Android platform
has several development issues. Since manufacturers are flexible to modify the
software stack while offering customized solutions the system is quite not enhanced
for the related hardware.
Microsoft totally has a disparate
approach in the smartphone business. Contradictory to its desktop version, the
Microsoft caters to a very distinct market and has limited handsets it supports
such as Nokia, HTC and Samsung. Although the hardware-software integration is almost
perfect, there are several issues with the platform which is one of the reasons
that it is not so prominent in the market. Primarily, there is limited choice
when it comes to applications. Secondarily it is more suited for business users
who need to be in accord with Microsoft products for example Office suite.