Cover Story
A
s more and more smartphone users opt for Google’s Android operating system, Apple’s iOS and other systems such as Symbian are set to loose out of this smartphone opportunity. According to market research company, ComScore, more than 107 million Americans now own smartphones, up 6 percent from the three-month period ending in January. Android commanded 50.8 percent of the U.S. smartphone operating system market, up 2.2 percent, according to CNET’s report on ComScore’s study. The No. 2 smartphone operating system, Apple’s iOS, came in with 31.4 percent of the market, up 1.9 percent. Both Android and iOS have benefited as BlackBerry maker Research in Motion continued to struggle. RIM remained No. 3 in operating system market share but took a major hit due to its troubles, falling to 11.6 percent of the market from 15.2 percent. Commenting about the Android scenario globally as well as in India, Victor Shan, President India Device Business, Huawei said that according to various market agencies, Android currently has approx 56% share of the global smart phone OS market. “As per GFK, in Year 2011 total sales of handsets was 174Mn of which Smartphone sales contributed 8.03 Mn. Android Smartphone in India was 1.8Mn contributing approx 23%. Android is expected to capture over half of Indian Smartphone Market Share by end of 2012. As per one of the studies, Indian Smartphone user spends 2.5 hours a day using their phones with 72% of their time spent on activities such as gaming, entertainment, apps and internet related content. Only 28% of their time is now used for voice calls and text messaging. According to Huawei studies connecting to 4 cities in India nearly 40% of the users are not aware about operating system on the their phone, suggesting that consumers are not very well informed about the technical specs on their phones. OS vendors like Google and micro soft need to take greater initiative and educating users about the features available on the platform. In the same study Huawei found Entertainment 72% and Games (71%) are the two more important segment users access on their 14 | June 2012
Mobility june2012.indd 14
smart phone, typically used more by younger segment , . social networking is gaining momentum with 61% of the users accessing it. Business and life style is used 22% to 23% respectively,” he explained. And talking about Huawei’s app store, Shan said that Huawei has Hi-Space Huawei App store available exclusively to Huawei Smartphone owners. “We have over 2000 top apps for work, play and everything in between. The apps that come in the Huawei Smartphone is just the beginning. You can download more apps from Hi-Space and experience more on your phone. Hi-space caters to Indian taste. Hispace provides the best in the industry apps categorized to ease your search and experience on the app market,” he added. As being put by Nafis Kazim, Executive Vice President, Shyam Networks, Android is surely moving ahead with holding great promise for the end user as well as smartphone vendor community. “According to a recent report by analysis firm Convergence Catalyst, the Indian smartphone market is expected to grow by 100 percent with 18 to 20 million devices being sold in the year in comparison to 9.5 million units sold in 2011. Moreover, the report also says that smartphones will be responsible for 12 to 14 percent of the total handset sales. In the present situation, Symbian platform holds about 46 percent in market share while Android holds 28.3 percent market share, however this is likely to change in the coming months. As far as mobility space is concerned, Android is moving in the right direction. Development of Android application is already happening different segment of users. Shyam is getting sector specific Android applications development for the users of Tablets,” he adds on. Android is Ruling The Mobile Market Android is operating system built on Linux OS and developed by Google and Open Handset Alliance. It is a software www.mobilityindia.com
pile for mobile devices that consists of an operating system, key applications and middle-ware. It is a highly strong platform and in-depth knowledge of Android SDKs and NDKs helps android developers to build number of best applications. Android provide support of Java language for the developers so that they can make 3rd party applications on java which can easily run on device that is Android based. Team of Android developers have been working on development since Google has released the first version of SDK. SDK provides great tools and APIs essential to start building applications on Android using Java language. Android SDK comes with applications that are hugely useful for Android developers though Developers use these applications to simplify reuse of framework APIs for building cutting edge
android applications. Having knowledge of Android’s features, Android application developers very well understand the limitations of the Android and this ensures to easily create work around for those limitations. Android is the second giant ruling the mobile market because of its great beneficial features for users and high flexibility for developers with its open source development environment. It has market which is open application distribution channel that guarantees more flexibility and assurance to fast application development. Its Advantage Android Talking about the advantages of Android Shan from Huawei said that MOBILITY
7/4/2012 11:59:10 PM
the biggest ad is that it is an o platform. “Manufa developers can software’s and load If you have a pho you can download applications from p mobile also serves power and efficien multitasking, custo outstanding web based mobile p preferred choice f personal and com R&D continuousl technologies whic performance and the overall user ex Some of the path initiatives by have been introdu Cloud+ with a r next generation like 16GB Cloud Message+, Stream finder, SNS, Integration and an any device acc content saved o Emotional UI for be experience, integr useful applications Traffic Manager a Killer etc,” he expl Speaking abo advantages of platform, Nafis from Shyam sa there are some clear advantages Android system to the table for MOBILITY