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Computer Wars: Difference between revisions
→The smartphone and tablet wars, mid 2000s-Present
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==The smartphone and tablet wars, mid 2000s-Present==
* '''Sides''': Apple iOS (iPad, iPhone, iPod...), Google Android, RIM BlackBerry, Microsoft Windows Mobile / Windows Phone, Nokia Maemo/MeeGo, Palm/HP webOS
* '''Winner''': Ongoing, although Apple's iPad [http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20096903-64/apples-ipad-will-only-get-more-popular-analyst-says/ has the lion's share of the tablet market.] [[wikipedia:Usage share of operating systems#Mobile devices|On mobile devices]], the Linux-kernel-based-Android has the lead, followed by Apple's iOS, then
The 2000s saw great increases in the usage share of cell phones among the population at large. There arose high-end "smartphone" cell phones, equipped with touchscreens and enough processing power and memory / storage capacity to rival that of many desktop and/or notebook PCs from the previous decade (and thereby being suitable for running [[Mobile Phone Game|mobile phone games]] on). The category of "tablet PCs" also emerged, consisting of machines with internal hardware similar to smartphones <ref>(most of them, that is; a few have internals more like that of notebook PCs)</ref>, but with much larger touchscreens, and not all of them able to function as cell phones. As a side effect of the large-scale production of internal hardware components for smartphones and tablets, there arose a niche market of small "single-board computers" based on smartphone-class internals (such as the DigiKey / Texas Instruments BeagleBoard and the Raspberry Pi), intended for use by computer experts (such as students and hobbyist programmers).
Apple's iPhone and its operating system iOS (adapted from Mac OS X), though not the first smartphone, rapidly gained the lead after its debut in 2007. Google released their competitor, a Linux-based OS called Android, during the next year, licensing it to many third-party phone manufacturers (unlike Apple, who opted to manufacture all iOS devices themselves), and gained the lead in marketshare by 2011. Some established mobile device manufacturers (such as RIM, Nokia, and Palm) developed their own smartphone / tablet hardware and OSes, and gained smaller portions of the marketshare, but as Android phone manufacturers multiplied and released cheaper and/or better terminals, many of those companies folded, unable to keep up. Microsoft tries to keep up with its own Windows Phone system.
{{reflist}}
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