CONSUMER PREFERENCES TOWARDS MOBILE

OPERATING SYSTEM

1 . INTRODUCTION ( TOPIC ) :
-The topic is about conducting a research study on consumer preferences
towards different mobile operating system. One of the most widely used
technologies today is mobile technology. It includes several or we can say
all forms of portable technology like laptops, palmtops, cell phones,
personal digital assistants, wireless card payment terminals, global
positioning systems. This technology is radically increasing around the
world day by day. This can be clearly seen in our day to day life as a poor
man also either posses a mobile phone or has access to it. It has
transformed the way of doing business. Previously people use to go to
banks or offices to do their task but now they can easily do it from mobile
phone. It can be seen that in the past few years the wireless technologies
is highly developed. Along with the exponential improvement in
performance & capacity of wireless communications systems, the
information can be easily accessed using mobile devices. In order to
improve their infrastructure and rolling out data coverage, the mobile
networks are spending a large amount. The continuous advances in
mobile technology is impacting everyones life. The users are getting
benefitted from the advances in mobile technology. This is clearly visible
in our day to day life. Previously, in order to mail important documents
one has to deliver it from door to door but with the advancement in
mobile technology one can easily sent it in few minutes in the form of soft
copy. As a boon, the use of smart phones & tablets has transformed
communications, entertainment. The advances in mobile technology is
affecting various other fields also like it is playing a vital role in health
care systems. As an example, if a person owns a business then he is free
to extend his business rather than confining it to a particular area. This
can be seen from the previous year that with the increasing number of
years the generations of mobile is also increasing. The generation of a
mobile phone is represented by G. From 1946 to 1980, 0G i.e. the zero
generation prevailed. This included early mobile phones which were very
expensive and it could only be used in cars, trucks and briefcases. It had a
voice call feature only. After 0G next generation came which is 1G i.e. first
generation. In this generation cellphones were analog devices which
functions on AMPS/Datatac technology. Its features were voice calls with
limited data which was somewhat higher than the previous generation. As
the time passed the next digital generation came into existence which is

the 2G i.e. the second generation cellular network. Its features were
somewhat enhanced than the previous generations. It had voice, sms and
circuit switched data features. The technologies which prevailed during
this period were GSM, iDEN, EDGE,GPRS, CDMA, TDMA and HSCSD. Out of
the above technologies some belong to the 2.5G standards family. In order
to intoduce new features and technologies, the next generation was
introduced i.e. 3G. It had superior features like broadband data, voice and
streaming video. Though this technology was not fully implemented. It
came into light from 2004 which included technologies like W-CDMA,
1Xev-DO. To add up some new features in the previous version of the
generation, 4G was introduced. This generation had high speed
broadband for data and visual centric information which is capable of
transmitting data at 100mbps while moving and 1Gbs while standing still.
On the basis of the advancement in mobile technology, the
operating system on which these work can be defined below
along with the comparison between them:
Symbian OS: This operating system which is based on original PDAs from
Psion is produced by the software development & licensing company
named as Symbian Ltd. It was established in June 1998. The native
language of the Symbian OS is C++ and therefore this is known as its
primary programming language. It has the largest installed base. This
operating system is used in Nokia mobiles. From the point of view of
software development, it must possess the right SDK and the Integrated
Development Environment (IDE) tool of our choice. An IDE generally
possess a source editor, compiler and/or interpreter and debugger and is a
software application which allows the computer programmer to develop
software for a certain platform. The IDE required for symbian OS is either
Carbide C++, Code Warrior or Visual C++. In this the programmer is free
to use any programming language.
Android OS : This is a software platform and operating system for mobile
devices which is based on Linux kernel and is developed by google but
later on by Open Handset Alliance (OHA) . Its native language is Java
which is the officially supported language. In this applications can be
written in other languages also but later on it is compiled to ARM native
code. This Operating System is used in Samsung, HTC mobiles. IPhone OS
(iOS ) : This strong but expensive operating system is developed by Apple
whose native language is C. It is also used in iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.
BlackBerry OS :This operating system is developed by Research In
Motion for its BlackBerry line of smartphone hand held devices. It provides
multitasking & supports specialized input devices that have been adopted

by RIM for use in its handhelds especially the trackballs, trackwheel,

trackpad and touchscreens. This operating system is designed only in C+
+ and it supports many languages like US English,UK English, French, etc.
Windows Phone 7: It is also known as Windows Mobile operating
system. It is developed by Microsoft that was used in smartphones and
mobile devices, but is being currently phased out to specialized markets.
The current and last version is "Windows Mobile 6.5". It is based on the
Windows CE 5.2 kernel. It is programmed in C++ language.
On the basis of the above discussion about the various mobile operating
system, we can differentiate
between various mobile phones. Below in
the discussion, in our paper, we will be considering iphone and other
android mobile phones. iPhone is the first smart phone which is a touch
screen mobile phone, developed and supplied by Apple. It has the ability
to touch the tasks easily which in turn requires a computer to work on.
Whereas Android is Googles Linux based mobile operating system that
has powered many smart phones. It is just a software. Both of them have
their unique applications store. The apple iphone has apple app store
while android has got an android market.
1) If we compare the loading time between the iphone and android mobile
phones then we can say that an iphone takes much less loading time as
compared to the loading time taken by the android phones. And therefore,
due to the several beneficial features of an iphone, it is more in demand
and is more searched on internet in comparison to android phones.
2)There is a feature in Apple iphone wherein it alerts the user in case of
any missed instances, but this feature forces the user to end up the task
he is performing. Whereas the google android phone has a drag and drop
screen that also alerts the user of any occurrences but it allows him to
continue his work. 3)It is easy to perform the necessary accessory
maintenance in apple iphone since it controls all of its hardware. While
googles android is a simple platform that functions on different platforms,
& does not allow for easy accessory support.

2 . INTRODUCTION ( MOBILE OPERATING

SYSYTEM ) :
ANDROID ( OPERATING SYSTEM ) :
Android (from its former owner Android, Inc.) is a mobile
operating system (OS) currently developed by Google, based on the
Linux kernel and designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices
such as smartphones and tablets. Android's user interface is mainly
based on direct manipulation, using touch gestures that loosely
correspond to real-world actions, such as swiping, tapping and
pinching, to manipulate on-screen objects, along with a virtual
keyboard for text input. In addition to touchscreen devices, Google
has further developed Android TV for televisions, Android Auto for
cars, and Android Wear for wrist watches, each with a specialized
user interface. Variants of Android are also used on notebooks,
game consoles, digital cameras, and other electronics.
Since 2013, Android is the best selling on tablets; and on
smartphones the OS is dominant, thereby giving it the largest
installed base of all operating systems of any kind.
Initially developed by Android, Inc., which Google bought in 2005,
Android was unveiled in 2007, along with the founding of the Open
Handset Alliance a consortium of hardware, software, and
telecommunication companies devoted to advancing open
standards for mobile devices. As of July 2013, the Google Play store
has had over one million Android applications ("apps") published,
and over 50 billion applications downloaded . An AprilMay 2013
survey of mobile application developers found that 71% of
developers create applications for Android , and a 2015 survey
found that 40% of full-time professional developers see Android as
their priority target platform, which is comparable to Apple's iOS on
37% with both platforms far above others, At Google I/O 2014, the
company revealed that there were over one billion active monthly
Android users, up from 538 million in June 2013.
Android's source code is released by Google under open source
licenses, although most Android devices ultimately ship with a
combination of open source and proprietary software, including
proprietary software required for accessing Google services. Android
is popular with technology companies that require a ready-made,
low-cost and customizable operating system for high-tech devices.

Its open nature has encouraged a large community of developers

and enthusiasts to use the open-source code as a foundation for
community-driven projects, which add new features for advanced
users , or bring Android to devices originally shipped with other
operating systems. At the same time, as Android has no centralised
update system most Android devices fail to receive security
updates: research in 2015 concluded that almost 90% of Android
phones in use had known but unpatched security vulnerabilities due
to lack of updates and support..The success of Android has made it a
target for patent litigation as part of the so-called "smartphone
wars" between technology companies

iOS (MOBILE OPERATING SYSTEM) :

iOS (originally iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and

developed by Apple Inc. and distributed exclusively for Apple hardware. It
is the operating system that presently powers many of the company's
mobile devices, including the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. It is the second
most popular mobile operating system platform in the world by sales,
after Android.
Originally unveiled in 2007, for the iPhone, it has been extended to
support other Apple devices such as the iPod Touch (September 2007),
iPad (January 2010), iPad Mini (November 2012) and second-generation
Apple TV onward (September 2010). As of January 2015, Apple's App Store
contained more than 1.4 million iOS applications, 725,000 of which are
native for iPads. These mobile apps have collectively been downloaded
more than 100 billion times.
The iOS user interface is based on the concept of direct manipulation,
using multi-touch gestures. Interface control elements consist of sliders,
switches, and buttons. Interaction with the OS includes gestures such as
swipe, tap, pinch, and reverse pinch, all of which have specific definitions
within the context of the iOS operating system and its multi-touch
interface. Internal accelerometers are used by some applications to
respond to shaking the device (one common result is the undo command)
or rotating it in three dimensions (one common result is switching from
portrait to landscape mode).
iOS shares with OS X some frameworks such as Core Foundation and
Foundation Kit; however, its UI toolkit is Cocoa Touch rather than OS X's
Cocoa, so that it provides the UIKit framework rather than the AppKit
framework. It is therefore not compatible with OS X for applications. Also

while iOS also shares the Darwin foundation with OS X, Unix-like shell
access is not available for users and restricted for apps, making iOS not
fully Unix-compatible either.
Major versions of iOS are released annually. The current release, iOS 9.2,
was released on December 8, 2015. In iOS, there are four abstraction
layers: the Core OS layer, the Core Services layer, the Media layer, and
the Cocoa Touch layer. The current version of the operating system (iOS
9), dedicates around 1.3 GB of the device's flash memory for iOS itself.[10]
It runs on the iPhone 4S and later, iPad 2 and later, iPad Pro, all models of
the iPad Mini, and the 5th-generation iPod Touch and later.

 MICROSOFT WINDOWS ( MOBILE OPERATING

SYSTEM ) :

Windows Mobile is a family of mobile operating systems developed by

Microsoft for smartphones and Pocket PCs.
Its origins dated back to Windows CE in 1996, though Windows Mobile
itself first appeared in 2000 as PocketPC 2000. It was renamed "Windows
Mobile" in 2003, at which point it came in several versions (similar to the
desktop versions of Windows) and was aimed at business and enterprise
consumers. By 2007, it was the most popular smartphone software in the
U.S., but this popularity faded in the following years. In February 2010,
facing competition from rival OSs including iOS and Android, Microsoft
announced Windows Phone to supersede Windows Mobile. As a result,
Windows Mobile has been deprecated. Windows Phone is incompatible
with Windows Mobile devices and software.[3][4][5] The last version of
Windows Mobile, released after the announcement of Windows Phone, was
6.5.5. After this, Microsoft ceased development on Windows Mobile, in
order to concentrate on Windows Phone.
Most versions of Windows Mobile have a standard set of features, such as
multitasking and the ability to navigate a file system similar to that of
Windows 9x and Windows NT, including support for many of the same file
types. Similarly to its desktop counterpart, it comes bundled with a set of
applications that perform basic tasks. Internet Explorer Mobile is the
default web browser, and Windows Media Player is the default media
player used for playing digital media. The mobile version of Microsoft
Office, is the default office suite.
Internet Connection Sharing, supported on compatible devices, allows the
phone to share its Internet connection with computers via USB and
Bluetooth. Windows Mobile supports virtual private networking over PPTP
protocol. Most devices with mobile connectivity also have a Radio
Interface Layer. The Radio Interface Layer provides the system interface
between the Cell Core layer within the Windows Mobile OS and the radio
protocol stack used by the wireless modem hardware. This allows OEMs to
integrate a variety of modems into their equipment.
The user interface changed dramatically between versions, only retaining
similar functionality. The Today Screen, later called the Home Screen,
shows the current date, owner information, upcoming appointments, e-

mails, and tasks. The taskbar display the current time as well as the
volume level. Devices with a cellular radio also show the signal strength
on said taskbar.