Mobile operating systems — The rise of Android and iOS

Over the last 15 years, mobile phones have become an integral part of our lives as the device became smarter by the day, thanks to constant advancements in operating system (OS).

The first mobile phone call was demonstrated by a Motorola engineer in 1983 but the story of mobile OS starts in the mid-1990s.

In 1994, the first ‘smartphone’ IBM Simon was launched. It had touchscreen, allowed email exchange and acted as Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).

In 1996, Palm Inc rolled out Palm OS-enabled PDA. It was not much different from the IBM Simon but the Palm OS was continuously developed for its other products.

First modern OS for mobiles was Symbian. It was launched in the market with Ericsson R380 in 2000. This OS gained popularity after it was lapped up by Nokia for its high-end phones.

For the initial years of this decade, Symbian dominated the global smartphone market with 67 percent share in 2006.

Around the same time, two new players came into the market and changed the world of smartphones. Google unveiled its Android OS and Apple launched iOS through iPhone.

The first commercially available phone running Android was HTC Dream, in 2008. Whereas the first Apple phone running iOS was released in 2007.

Currently, Android's latest version is 7.0 'Nougat' and Apple announced it iOS 11 at its annual Apple World Wide Developers Conference.

Android OS is open-source which gives it the popularity enjoys today among smartphone manufacturers. The availability of apps for this OS is staggering. More than 2.8 million apps are listed on Google Play Store in March 2017. Android supports hundreds of languages, which gives convenience for companies targeting specific regions.

Most features which are part of iOS can be found in other operating systems. The differentiator being enhanced user experience.

Going by market share today, Google's Android and Apple's iOS combine for 99.8 percent global market share. In future, the scene is not going to change much either, as per the data provided by International Data Corporation (IDC).

The market would be dominated by 5-6 inches screen size smartphones, with their market share being more than 85 percent in 2021.