Before Apple's iPhone people merely bothered about Operating system of their mobile phones. Customers just wanted to get phones with good features like camera, mp3 support, FM radio, torch light (Remember Nokia 1110 :-) ). iPhone changed the way people looked at their phones, now with features people looked for apps available, processor speed and lot more. In this time a new operating system Android was announced and soon it became the pioneer in smart phone market. It is giving tough competition to Apple's iOS and had almost(except some market segment) wiped out Nokia from the market. Samsung fully backed Google's Android and it became the most liked android OEM, but with Google's dominance over Android other alternatives are vital to eliminate monopoly. Here we have a look at 5 most eligible alternatives to Android.1. Tizen: First one comes from the company which has made the most from Android. Yes, this operating system is a product of Samsung. It is believed that Samsung has dumped its Bada OS to pave way for development of Tizen. Recently Tizen was announced in Mobile World Congress. However the experts were not convinced from the devices running on Tizen there but that was a mere entry version, final product is yet to come. Tizen is jointly developed by Intel, Samsung, Sprint Nextel and some other companies.
2. Ubuntu Touch: Canonical the company behind one of the most popular versions of Linux i.e. Ubuntu announced its Mobile Operating System Ubuntu touch early Jan this year. Ubuntu touch is based on the Linux kernel as Android hence many of the handsets currently running Android will be compatible with Ubuntu touch too. According to Canonical , Ubuntu touch will work on Mobile as well as PC equally efficient. There are already apps available on its store and developers are adding more to it. Personally I would love to have Ubuntu touch for my phone, eagerly waiting for it.
3. Firefox OS: Firefox, mostly famous for its Mozilla browser also launched two smartphones running its Firefox OS. Firefox has started sending preview devices for the developers to make its app store more rich before commercially starting shipping of phones running on Firefox OS.
4. Jolla Sailfish: Finland based Jolla is working on Sailfish OS, if you see some videos on youtube you will find it really interesting, specially the interaction with apps on home screen is amazing. Home screen , however resembles with Windows OS full of live tiles. Chinese largest mobile retailer in country D.phone is backing Jolla in this project.
It is difficult to say whether any of the above will be as successful as Android, but to start in market they have to compete not only with Android and iOS , there is Windows, Blackberry OS, Nokia all these are heavy hand and capable of playing market tactics. One more challenge will be to provide quality apps to users they have to build app store to compete with Google's Play or Apple store.
More competition , more flavours, more variety - it will be treat for end users
