Motorola Developing Own Smartphone or Tablet OS?

Tweet

Android, iOS and Blackberry are current leaders in the smartphone OS competition, but that doesn’t mean there’s no more space for others. Motorola is rumored to be developing its own mobile OS, after having snagged engineers from well-known smartphone makers.

The market for smartphone OSes has mostly been captured by the big three, leaving Symbian, webOS and even Windows Mobile (and the new Windows Phone 7) behind. The market is set to be skewed further, as Android is fast-accelerating in terms of market share.

Motorola, however, is said to have recently hired engineers from Apple and Adobe. Motorola also acquired 280 North–creator of the open source Cappuccino programming language– in 2010. This includes an Objective-J programming language that lets apps run within the mobile browser using Javascript.

These developments suggest that Motorola might be planning to come up with a mobile OS of its own. There are speculations that the OS in development might be significantly web-based. Now this can either be a smartphone or a tablet operating system, although no one can say at this point.

At the very least, Motorola might be keeping its options open, in view of licensing and copyright issues that might arise with Android. Recall that Microsoft and Motorola have been in patent disputes because of supposed Microsoft patents within Android.

But will a brand new mobile OS succeed in competing against the more established OSes? It might just happen, but it would have to be something like an Android or an iOS to do so.