Manufacturer-Made Proprietary Operating Systems

Some device manufacturers use their own proprietary operating systems for their phones and tablets. A very good example is Apple company , with iOS being the operating system developed by them for their iPod touch, iPhone and iPad devices. Other examples include such as RIM who use their proprietary BlackBerry OS for all BlackBerry phones and tablets, and HP, using their proprietary Palm Web OS for their Palm series of smartphones and tablets. One characteristic of such operating systems is that they have a very consistent look and feel across all the devices they run on, similar to the way Mac OS X looks and behaves the same on a MacBook Pro as it does on an iMac or MacBook Air.

Let us now take a look at some of the popular operating systems in this category.

1. Apple iOS

iOS is the operating system used by Apple in all variants of the iPod touch, iPhone and iPad. While smartphones have been around since the 90s, it was Apple that successfully managed to convince the masses to switch to them with the release of the first iPhone in 2007, running the first version of iOS. At the time of its release, iOS wasn’t even capable of doing what most other smartphone operating systems had been doing for nearly a decade—true multitasking, data connection teetering, task switching, Bluetooth pairing, PC-like application installation using an installer file, and dozens of others, among others not yet known to anyone.

The key to this success lay in an interface we would call ‘Idiot-friendly’, which was primarily targeted at the least smart users so that they would be able to use a smartphone that was only a pseudo-smartphone back then. Other factors that contributed to the success of iOS included smooth graphics, consistent user interface elements across apps, built-in iPod applications, iTunes integration, an App Store for purchasing and installing apps and perhaps most importantly, a multi-touch finger-friendly capacitive touch screen that eliminated the use of a stylus with finger-to-touch, iPod touch, which resulted in the iPhone going viral and ended up making most people buy it as the status symbol of owning an iPhone outweighed the utility of having a smartphone.

The introduction of the iPad in 2010 only added to the popularity of iOS. Like the case of smartphones, tablets had been widely available for over a decade, but it was again Apple that built on the success of the iPhone to bring them to the masses in the form of the iPad, creating a modern tablet boom and leading other competitors to join the market. With the iPad and iPad 2, Apple still leads the tablet market share by a huge margin. Due to its restricted nature, iOS limited users to only the features that Apple has decided are appropriate. That’s when the development community decided to intervene and came up with jailbreaking. This allowed power users to install additional apps available in the official App Store and customize their iPhones beyond the standard features provided by Apple. By now, IOS has improved a lot and as of the current version 4.3.3, it supports multitasking, audio and video playback for AirPlay devices, data tethering and many other enhancements, in addition to the above-mentioned features. Jailbreaking plays a vital role in iOS devices and enables users to take their iPhones beyond the often-limited limits set by Apple.

2. RIM BlackBerry OS

This is the top most operating system used in all BlackBerry devices. Despite being popular in the corporate sector, BlackBerry devices are losing market share to Android and iPhone. However, they still have a loyal following of users who are used to the convenience of the signature hardware keyboard of BlackBerry devices and the builtin corporate features of BlackBerry OS. RIM’s attempts to enter the touch screen smartphone market were very successful due to the limited number of quality apps available, although a recently released tablet called the BlackBerry PlayBook is the first and latest BlackBerry device to ship with their latest OS called QNX which is set to replace the older BlackBerry OS. Future phones by BlackBerry are also expected to ship with QNX. A recent development that could change things for the better for RIM is the Android App Player which promises to bring support for running hundreds of thousands of Android apps on BlackBerry OS devices, as was recently demoed at the BlackBerry World 2011 keynote.

3. HP webOS (formerly Palm webOS)

Palm – despite being one of the early players in the smartphone market – experienced declining market share and declining revenues due to its older PalmOS devices, which would not keep up with iOS and Android. Palm tried to counter this by replacing its dying PalmOS with a completely new operating system built from scratch – webOS. Although webOS was built by Palm as a very solid and feature-rich operating system, with a killer interface to match, it was not enough to keep the company’s lost reputation afloat. Eventually, on the verge of bankruptcy, Palm got acquired by HP in 2010. The acquisition was followed by the announcement of continued development of webOS alongside HP – under HP’s brand name. At its core, webOS derives heavily from Linux and uses many open source components maintained on the Palm Open Source website. HP is heavily promoting Palm OS and releasing several devices running it, including the HP Veer and HP Pre 3 smartphones and the HP TouchPad tablet. While Webos doesn’t have a dominant market share at the moment, things look promising for the future of this platform.

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