Android vs. Symbian
It's Behind You
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What is SYMBIAN ?
Symbian OS is an open source operating system for mobile phones primarily used on Nokia advanced or data enabled smart phones. Symbian OS runs exclusively on ARM processors and has evolved from Psion's EPOC which was developed as a rudimentary operating system for early electronic organizers. The Psion EPOC OS was refered to EPOC16 beginning in the late 1990's to help distinguish it from the newer 32bit Operating system EPOC32, which eventually became Symbian OS. Psion software created a joint venture with several mobile hardware manufacturers, Ericsson®, Motorola®, and Nokia® called Symbian and eventually took on the name Symbian Software, renaming EPOC32 Symbian OS.
The key advantage of EPOC32 over its 16bit predecessor is the ability to multi-task, perform multiple functions at once. In newer devices, this might mean being able to surf the web using the phone and not lose your content when answering an incoming call.
Many third party manufacturers were able to license the 32bit EPOC OS for their organizers and other mobile data devices. Since the late 1990's,Symbian OS has become one of the most popular mobile device operating systems available.
Several device manufacturers from Nokia® to Sony/Ericsson® have committed to the new and open project that Symbian has announced for its mobile phone operating system, Symbian OS. Wireless carriers such as AT&T® and T-Mobile® have also pledged support for the project.
Symbian OS has also adapted to include soft features such as global positioning software (GPS) which will become as common as a camera in the very near future. Service providers and other companies could then publish location based services that interact with the GPS found in a mobile phone, appearing on the display once the user is near an application.
In recent years, Microsoft® and Palm® have been the most discussed providers of operating system software for mobile phones, but Symbian has been powering phones for quite some time. The company announced in 2008 that the operating system would become open source very soon, allowing other vendors and even users themselves to add to the already widely established Symbian OS. The support for the much established mobile platform is far and wide, though much of the press lately has centered around Apple's iPhone® and other offerings, including the Google Android™ OS for mobile devices.
Android is a software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications. The Android SDK provides the tools and APIs necessary to begin developing applications on the Android platform using the Java programming language.
Features
- Application framework enabling reuse and replacement of components
- Dalvik virtual machine optimized for mobile devices
- Integrated browser based on the open source WebKit engine
- Optimized graphics powered by a custom 2D graphics library; 3D graphics based on the OpenGL ES 1.0 specification (hardware acceleration optional)
- SQLite for structured data storage
- Media support for common audio, video, and still image formats (MPEG4, H.264, MP3, AAC, AMR, JPG, PNG, GIF)
- GSM Telephony (hardware dependent)
- Bluetooth, EDGE, 3G, and WiFi (hardware dependent)
- Camera, GPS, compass, and accelerometer (hardware dependent)
- Rich development environment including a device emulator, tools for debugging, memory and performance profiling, and a plugin for the Eclipse IDE
Android Architecture
The following diagram shows the major components of the Android operating system. Each section is described in more detail below.
Applications
Android will ship with a set of core applications including an email client, SMS program, calendar, maps, browser, contacts, and others. All applications are written using the Java programming language.
Application Framework
By providing an open development platform, Android offers developers the ability to build extremely rich and innovative applications. Developers are free to take advantage of the device hardware, access location information, run background services, set alarms, add notifications to the status bar, and much, much more.
Developers have full access to the same framework APIs used by the core applications. The application architecture is designed to simplify the reuse of components; any application can publish its capabilities and any other application may then make use of those capabilities (subject to security constraints enforced by the framework). This same mechanism allows components to be replaced by the user.
Underlying all applications is a set of services and systems, including:
- A rich and extensible set of Views that can be used to build an application, including lists, grids, text boxes, buttons, and even an embeddable web browser
- Content Providers that enable applications to access data from other applications (such as Contacts), or to share their own data
- A Resource Manager, providing access to non-code resources such as localized strings, graphics, and layout files
-
A
Notification Managerthat enables all applications to display custom alerts in the status bar -
An
Activity Managerthat manages the lifecycle of applications and provides a common navigation backstack
For more details and a walkthrough of an application, see the Notepad Tutorial.
Libraries
Android includes a set of C/C++ libraries used by various components of the Android system. These capabilities are exposed to developers through the Android application framework. Some of the core libraries are listed below:
- System C library - a BSD-derived implementation of the standard C system library (libc), tuned for embedded Linux-based devices
- Media Libraries - based on PacketVideo's OpenCORE; the libraries support playback and recording of many popular audio and video formats, as well as static image files, including MPEG4, H.264, MP3, AAC, AMR, JPG, and PNG
- Surface Manager - manages access to the display subsystem and seamlessly composites 2D and 3D graphic layers from multiple applications
- LibWebCore - a modern web browser engine which powers both the Android browser and an embeddable web view
- SGL - the underlying 2D graphics engine
- 3D libraries - an implementation based on OpenGL ES 1.0 APIs; the libraries use either hardware 3D acceleration (where available) or the included, highly optimized 3D software rasterizer
- FreeType - bitmap and vector font rendering
- SQLite - a powerful and lightweight relational database engine available to all applications
Android Runtime
Android includes a set of core libraries that provides most of the functionality available in the core libraries of the Java programming language.
Every Android application runs in its own process, with its own instance of the Dalvik virtual machine. Dalvik has been written so that a device can run multiple VMs efficiently. The Dalvik VM executes files in the Dalvik Executable (.dex) format which is optimized for minimal memory footprint. The VM is register-based, and runs classes compiled by a Java language compiler that have been transformed into the .dex format by the included "dx" tool.
The Dalvik VM relies on the Linux kernel for underlying functionality such as threading and low-level memory management.
Linux Kernel
Android relies on Linux version 2.6 for core system services such as security, memory management, process management, network stack, and driver model. The kernel also acts as an abstraction layer between the hardware and the rest of the software stack.
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According to Reuters, research firm Canalys said that phone makers sold 32.9 million Android-equipped phones globally in the fourth quarter, representing nearly seven times more than the same quarter last year. This is compared to sales of 31 million for Symbian.
The results also reflect Google's reign over Apple, said the report from Canalys. Shipments of the iPhone rose to 16.2 million from 8.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2009.
What sets Google apart from Apple or Nokia is that it provides its Android operating system free to other phone makers. This is why Android has become the standard software for many phone makers, said Reuters. Major models from Samsung Electronics, HTC and LG Electronics have selected Android as their operating system.
-Melanie Saxe
(Reuters)
Google Inc's Android dethroned Nokia's Symbian as the global leader in smartphone software during the last quarter of 2010, ending a reign that began with the birth of the industry a decade ago.The reshuffle underscores how quickly Google, which offers its software to phone makers for free, has raced to the top of the smartphone market ahead of Apple Inc's rapid ascension. Google and Apple have revolutionized the smartphone market, sending Nokia scrambling.
In the fourth quarter, phonemakers sold 32.9 million Android-equipped phones globally, roughly seven times more than the year-earlier quarter, compared with Symbian's sales of 31 million, according to Research firm Canalys.
The numbers also highlight Google's success in battling Apple, whose shipments of its popular iPhone increased to 16.2 million from 8.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2009, when it almost doubled Android's 4.7 million shipments.
Unlike Apple or Nokia, Google does not make its own phone hardware, but instead offers its Android operating system free to other phone makers who can adapt it to suit their devices.
As a result, Android has become the standard software for many phone makers. U.S. phone maker Motorola Mobility Inc has even managed to stage a comeback of sorts by focusing solely on Android after years of heavy market share losses.
Hit models from Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, HTC Corp and LG Electronics Inc also helped Android in the quarter as phone companies in many regions aggressively promoted Android phones.
Aside from smartphones, Google also gained on Apple in tablet computers, where its market share rose to 22 percent in the fourth quarter, while Apple's share fell to 75 percent from 95 percent, according to Strategy Analytics.
GOOGLE PUSH INTO APPS
In fact, only Nokia, Apple and Research In Motion Ltd have so far resisted using Android software.
Google said in October that mobile revenue, which includes mobile advertising, reached an annual run rate of $1 billion. While this is tiny compared with the $26.85 billion total net revenue analysts expect this year -- mostly generated from Web search related ads -- Google has made no secret of the fact it sees mobile playing a central role in its future.
Outgoing Chief Executive Eric Schmidt recently wrote in the Harvard Business Review that all of Google's strategic initiatives for 2011 revolve around mobile.
In particular, Google has moved to take on Apple in mobile applications, an area in which the iPhone maker has prevailed.
A big part of Apple's success in selling iPhone is its ability to attract hundreds of thousands of third-party software developers to create apps for everything from weather forecasts to weight-loss.
While Google has also courted third-party developers, its Android Marketplace still lags far behind Apple's in size.
NOKIA MOVE TO ANDROID?
Meanwhile, the Symbian system has suffered from the troubles of its owner and main user, Nokia, which now barely has a presence in the United States.
When Android arrived in the third quarter of 2008, Symbian's share of the global smartphone market was close to 50 percent. While Google's share has increased to 33 percent, Nokia's has fallen to less than 31 percent.
As a result some experts said this may mean Nokia will announce plans to introduce smartphone models using Android.
Last week, Nokia warned of a grim start to 2011 after rivals ate into even more of its smartphone market share, highlighting the scale of the task its new boss has to turnaround the business.
Stephen Elop, a former executive for Microsoft Corp who took over as Nokia chief executive in September, will unveil his plan to revamp Nokia's strategy on February 11.
Elop said last week he wanted to reopen markets such as the United States, where Nokia has lost out badly, and flagged a possible change in software strategy.
Nokia's U.S. shares were up 1.3 percent at $10.71 on New York Stock Exchange on Monday, while Google shares rose 0.01 pct at $601.05 on Nasdaq.
(Additional reporting by Alexei Oreskovic in San Francisco; editing by Will Waterman, Derek Caneyand Andre Grenon)
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Update: NPD's numbers are in as well, indicating that Google now has a 53 percent share in the US market, while Windows Phone 7 has managed to nab only two percent so far.
Google's Android becomes the world's leading smart phone platform
- Canalys reveals smart phone market exceeded 100 million units in Q4 2010
Palo Alto, Singapore and Reading (UK) – Monday, 31 January 2011
For immediate release
Canalys today published its final Q4 2010 global country-level smart phone market data, which revealed that Google's Android has become the leading platform. Shipments of Android-based smart phones reached 32.9 million, while devices running Nokia's Symbian platform trailed slightly at 31.0 million worldwide. But Nokia did retain its position as the leading global smart phone vendor, with a share of 28%. The fourth quarter also saw the worldwide smart phone market continue-------------------
The Symbian OS used to be the most powerful OS for cellphones before the release of Android and Maemo. One reason for the popularity of Android and Maemo among the developers as well as the cellphone manufacturers is the reason that they are Open-Source and would engage more developers and give them transparent application development opportunities. Following this, now Symbian OS has also been released as Open-Source by Symbian Limited.
The process of open-sourcing the Symbian OS had started a long time ago and this only marks the completion of that process. One remarkable thing here is that the process, which was due to be completed sometime in June was completed well before the deadline. This OS will be used on some recent phones under development, which are expected to come out early next year. The code of the Symbian OS was valued at billions of dollars, given the 330 million devices it powers at present.
Symbian had earlier open-sourced the kernel and the hardware services packages in October 2009, but now, the complete code of the Symbian OS is available for download. While the kernel and the hardware services are licensed under the Eclipse public license, the rest of the services and modules are under some other open source licenses.
Now in market Android getting a first place than other selling phones..