Companies Behind Mobile Operating Systems Race To Establish Ground

Tweet

The desktop OS market is pretty much wrapped with Microsoft taking most of the profit, Apple taking some and Linux taking the crumbs. But, the market researchers at iSuppli report that the mobile OS market is uncharted and wild, with all the major players fighting for a piece of marketshare, and they’re also hoping to expand their presence beyond the traditional smartphone.

Between the profits that are in these mobile app stores and the premiums that phone manufacturers pay to have a mobile OS on their device, there is a lot of money on these devices, and Microsoft, Apple, Google, Nokia and others are fighting to expand their mobile OS to as many platforms as possible. Google’s Android, a popular Linux-based mobile OS, made it’s debut on mobile phones, but has already been seen on TVs, netbooks and even your kitchen appliances.

You might think that Apple is content to have the iPhone OS just on the iPhone – but we’ve already seen them push the iPhone OS to the iPad and iPod Touch. There’s also been rumors that Apple might add the iPhone OS to the AppleTV. Everywhere the iPhone OS goes, it expands the OS’ reach and its app library. Even Windows Phone 7 looks like it could work on the Zune, and it’s predecessor, Windows Mobile, often made experiences running on non-smartphone devices.

The popularity of the iPhone’s app store has reached the mainstream and now, iSuppli reports, all the mobile OS companies are hoping to emulate Apple’s success by creating an attractive ecosystem for third-party apps for both developers and customers. Even Intel is offering an App Store for Atom-powered netbooks.

iSuppli forecasts that by 2014, over 700 million “mobile” devices, including smartphones, tablets, MIDs, whatever, will be shipped from manufacturers. That’ll most definitely way outnumber the total desktop computers shipped, and these OS companies are working to establish a mobile OS that is conductive for consumers, developers and can work across mobile platforms.