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3rd July 2012
The past few weeks have been pretty eventful in terms of mobile
phone operating systems, with most major vendors announcing something
new.
 Apple's
iOS 6 was announced last month, bringing turn-by-turn navigation
(and dumping Google Maps in the process), an improved version of
Siri and better Facebook integration. Although not a major upgrade,
Apple users will surely be happy with the continued improvements
in the operating system.
 Microsoft
also announced plans for Windows Phone 8, an operating system
that will be based on the same core as Windows 8 running on PCs
and tablets, and it will support a much wider variety of hardware
and be easier to manage for corporate customers. Although still
using the Metro interface on top, Windows  8
will be fundamentally different underneath and it will not run on
the current crop of Windows 7 smartphones. However, many of the
improvements will be carried forwards into Windows Phone 7.8 which
will run on those devices.
Android has also received an upgrade with Android 4.1
(also known as "Jelly Bean"). This version is meant
to offer performance improvements and better voice support plus
a number of other upgrades, and it will be seen first on the Google
Nexus 7 tablet.
 The
news from BlackBerry maker RIM was not as good however. In addition
to posting a significant loss for the last quarter, RIM also announced
that their next generation BlackBerry 10 operating system
would be delayed until early next year.
Out of all of these, Apple's offering is the most impressive
even if the changes are relatively minor. iOS 6 will run on all
iPhones back to the iPhone 3GS (although not the original iPad)
which shows a substantially better commitment to customers than
Android manufacturers.
With Android, many customers are still stuck waiting for a promised
upgrade to Android 4.0 from Android 2.3. The release of Android
4.1 only serves to underline how bad the situation is for some owners.
In some cases the promised upgrades have been cancelled, in most
cases they are taking a lot longer than originally anticipated.
In our view, the only reliable way to get a handset running Android
4.1 will be to buy a handset running Android 4.1 out of the box.
The radically different approach to Windows Phone may also present
a problem to manufacturers who will have to go off and redesign
their handsets from scratch. In the long term this move is likely
to give Microsoft a significant strategic advantage, but Microsoft's
partners are likely to be unhappy about having to start again with
their smartphone designs. However, several manufacturers have shown
commitment to this, and Microsoft have a reasonable chance of some
success.
The situation for RIM is the worst of them all. RIM have pinned
their hopes on the new BB10 operating system, based on the QNX OS
in use in the BlackBerry PlayBook, but even if it came to market
now it would probably be too late to improve matters.  The
world doesn't need any more mobile operating systems and iOS, Android
and the improving Windows platforms are likely to be very hard to
beat. As it is, RIM are pinning their hopes on a OS due sometime
next year which will probably not be enough to reverse their slide.
One wildcard is the Firefox OS from Mozilla coming in
2013. This ultra-lightweight operating system will be appearing
on ZTE and Alcatel branded phones. As the name suggest, the Firefox
OS is based around HTML5 applications rather than being a monolithic
operating system (such as iOS and Android). Is this the next big
thing or will it be another failed platform? We don't know, but
it is certainly going to be interesting to find out..
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