A Mobile Operating System or Mobile OS is an operating system for phones, tablets, smartwatches, or other mobile devices. While computers such as typical laptops are ‘mobile’, the operating systems usually used on them are not considered mobile ones, as they were originally designed for desktop computers that historically did not have or need specific mobile features.
Mobile operating systems combine features of a personal computer operating system with other features useful for mobile or handheld use including a wireless inbuilt modem and SIM tray for telephony and data connection, a touchscreen, cellular, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi Protected Access, Wi-Fi, Global Positioning System (GPS) mobile navigation, video- and single-frame picture cameras, speech recognition, voice recorder, music player, near field communication, and infrared blaster. By Q1 2018, over 383 million smartphones were sold with 86.2 percent running Android and 12.9 percent running iOS. Android alone is more popular than the popular desktop operating system Windows, and in general smartphone use (even without tablets) outnumber desktop use.
Mobile devices with mobile communications abilities (e.g., smartphones) contain two mobile operating systems – the main user-facing software platform is supplemented by a second low-level proprietary real-time operating system which operates the radio and other hardware.
Popular Mobile OS includes
Mobile OS |
Market share |
Android |
86.2% |
iOS |
13.7% |
Windows 10 Mobile |
0.1% |
BlackBerry 10 |
N/A |
Tizen |
N/A |
Sailfish OS |
N/A |
Ubuntu Touch |
N/A |