Blog posts tagged with 'system'

From comparatively humble beginnings, Samsung – always South Korea’s premier electronics company – has managed to diversify into the Smartphone industry with greater success than virtually all of its competitors. Though rivals like RIM and Sony are falling by the wayside (with respective first quarter sales of approximately 11 million and 7 million), Samsung have managed to supersede even Apple in the realm of Smartphone shipments. In the first quarter of 2012, Samsung shipped 43 million Smartphones to Apple’s 35 million: together, the two powerhouse corporations boast more than 50% of overall Smartphone sales – and over 90% of Smartphone profits, considering the top-end spec of much of their merchandise. Amongst Google’s loose “coalition” of Android Smartphones, Samsung is surely their most valuable companion. In addition to providing good press for the Android OS due to strong sales and superb hardware, Samsung is one of the few companies to serve as a credible threat to Apple’s continuing supremacy. If Samsung can absorb substantial Smartphone sales from the Apple leviathan while companies like Microsoft (with their forthcoming tablet computer) belay them elsewhere, Google could deliver a serious blow to their most dangerous competitor and boost the profit potential of the Android market. However, Samsung – like Apple – are a company that like to stand on their own two feet, and it’s no surprise that they’re contemplating the possibility of utilizing their own operating system, the heretofore underdog Bada, as a viable alternative to Android for Samsung’s budget Smartphones. This isn’t a particularly substantial rift in the two company’s fortunes. While Bada has the potential to steal some of Android’s thunder (and thus risk diluting the essential two horse race between the iOS and Android), the fact it’s designed with budget Smartphones in mind means that it will essentially act as a ‘gateway’ OS to draw in new customers, who may not be attracted to expensive, high end tour de forces like Samsung’s Galaxy S3. Samsung are also considering combining the base Bada system with the open-source Tizen OS; as another system which is not intended to upset the balance between Android and iOS (and as one which attracts third party developers courtesy of its freely-distributed nature), Tizen should add the muscle which Bada has so far sadly lacked. It’s a savvy business decision from Samsung; they won’t be upsetting the proverbial apple cart, but simultaneously they’ll be setting the groundwork for a day when their own operating system is poised to take a chunk of the market. And with Tizen’s developers on board (along with the developers who helped develop the MeeGo system, swathes of which were appropriated for Tizen), Samsung are guaranteed at least some success in the arena of third party development, ensuring a healthy library of applications on launch. We’re fairly confident that Samsung will be launching at least one Bada/Tizen Smartphone this year; though the cost of developing software like this may be prohibitive under normal circumstances, Samsung’s healthy financial future means that it’s impossible to rule it out entirely!

Though Android has become a powerful platform since its inception, it increasingly faces criticism that its open-source policy is leading to system fragmentation among its devices. We ourselves highlighted the problems in an older blog post, comparing the merits of an open-sourced, adaptable system like Android with a closed-source, proprietary system like Apple’s iOS. But for the first time, Apple have made a public spectacle of Android’s weakness, and attacked them directly for their so-called fragmentation, at this year’s WWDC. There are obvious merits to a system like Android; parent company Google’s policy of allowing disparate companies to adapt the OS as they see fit means that massively more Android Smartphones are being activated every day – some estimates place it at over 900,000, or roughly 10 per second. But with so many Android handsets out there, it’s a strain for developers to create applications that are capable of running on multiple devices. For example, when Instagram – a popular application that made its name on the iPhone – initially launched on Android systems, it lacked compatibility with HTC’s flagship One X device; arguably the most powerful Android Smartphone on the market at that time. That would be equivalent to Instagram lacking compatibility with the iPhone 4S on release; it would curtail a massive amount of potential users. Apple, by contrast, utilizes their proprietary, homebrewed iOS on their Smartphones. The numbers speak for themselves: while only 7% of Android users are utilizing Android’s most recent version, 5.0 (the Ice Cream Sandwich OS), more than 80% of Apple consumers use the iOS 5 (and are consequently poised to immediately upgrade to the iOS 6 upon release with no issue). For the majority of users, this isn’t exactly a deal-breaker; only the hardcore fringe of customers cares about having the most up-to-date operating system sheerly for the sake of it. What is a deal-breaker, however, is being unable to use the most recent and popular applications because your phone was left out of some anonymous developer’s calculations. And it’s impossible to deny that the risk of that happening is far greater for an Android device than an Apple device. That’s the biggest difference between the two opposing operating systems – unity. While Android may have a vibrant audience (and unquestionably broader, in terms of market appeal, than Apple’s), their sturdy opponent has a much greater ability to shepherd their users towards the most recent versions of their device. But, as in all things, there is a trade off for this - at the top echelons of development, the iPhone becomes inferior to devices like the Samsung Galaxy S3 or HTC One X. While a much more consistent OS than Android, leaving the iOS in the hands of one company has made it less adapatable and spontaneous overall. So while Apple may snicker at the "nerds" who tinker with their devices to maximize performance, or the applications which make such software alterations possible, they're still able to milk much less out of their Smartphones than the dedicated Android user.

Google have come a long way since their humble beginnings in the cut-throat world of search engines in the late 1990s. Differentiating themselves from the herd with a simple, uncluttered, utilitarian design that put Yahoo to shame, Google has gone from strength to strength: nowadays they have diversified into almost every imaginable multimedia avenue. But as a site that manufactures mobile phone peripherals, our chief area of interest lies in Google’s mobile phone operating system – the freely distributed Android OS. Owing to this open-source policy of distribution, Google have successfully manoeuvred themselves into a position of supremacy in the Smartphone market; the concept of a mobile OS that can be tinkered with extensively is an attractive prospect for companies like Samsung and HTC, who incorporate their own GUIs to ensure browsing their unique phones is a singular experience. It’s the anti-iOS: unlike Apple’s proprietary operating system, which is singularly linked to the experience of owning an iPhone, Android prides itself on its diversity and usefulness across a broad spectrum of devices.  But Google, clever company that they are, know that there’s always room for improvement, and they’re looking to their competitors for inspiration. In the past, Microsoft attempted to run their Windows OS across different types of devices, such as tablets, phones and desktops, to provide a homogenous user experience, building up brand familiarity. Their efforts, sadly, failed. This stands in contrast to Apple’s successful policy of building up a brand through marketing, while utilizing thoroughly different operating systems for different devices – just compare the iOS, their iPhone operating system, to the OS X, the classic operating system of their wildly popular Macs. Keeping this in mind, Google are opting to move towards a gradual conflation of Android, their Smartphone operating system, and Chrome OS, their cloud-based operating system that recently debuted on their chromebook and chrometop devices. It makes sense from a business perspective. In the past, Google had to adopt the simpler Android system for phones, because they lacked the processing power to run software as sophisticated as that found in the Chrome OS. But as Smartphones grow smarter, and prices gradually decrease, it’s becoming more and more cost effective and easy to premiere powerful, versatile software like Chrome OS on a device small enough to hold in one hand. But they don’t want to make the mistake that Microsoft did, which was, essentially, brutally ramming an operating system designed for desktops across platforms that simply didn’t complement it. So their plan is to smoothly and organically combine the two platforms, taking the best features of each to create a seamless (but still distinctive) browsing experience. Their Chrome web browser has already made its debut on Android 4.0, marking Google’s first steps into convergence; who knows what kind of conflated Chrome/Android powerhouse could be created by the time the 5.0 or 6.0 versions roll around? It’s easy to lose yourself in the clouds (or perhaps simply place your head in cloud-based storage for a time) when thinking of such heady notions, but for the casual consumer, there’s likely to be little change. Google is a superb company ran by bright and forward-thinking people; they’re sure to retain the unique elements that make Smartphones and desktops special, no matter how similar the operating systems of each may become!