Windows Mobile vs Google Android

Windows Mobile and Android are two smartphone operating systems that are quite popular nowadays for very different reasons. Windows Mobile, from Microsoft, is a very established operating system that has been around for a considerable length of time. It’s a tried and tested operating systems that people are quite familiar with and know how to operate. Google introduced their operating system rather recently and as such, it is still in its infancy and suffers from a lot of instability that is being addressed.

The most major difference between these two is in the licensing. Where Windows Mobile is a proprietary software that hardware manufacturers need to pay for, Android is open source software that uses Linux at its core. The Android’s licensing also allows other entities to create software for Android without releasing their own source, letting them keep their modifications within their own line of phones. Google does sell some applications that come with the OS, and it is the only way for them to make money out of it.

Because of the gap in maturity of the two, there is a wide margin in terms of market share. Windows Mobile is installed in a wide array of phones from a lot of manufacturers. Google’s Android operating system is only running on less than 10 types of smartphones at the moment and is expected to improve to fewer than 20 at the end of 2009. The same is also true when it comes to third party software. There are a lot more software that can be bought for Windows Mobile compared to Android.

Although, for the meantime, you can only get handsets that have a specific operating system installed, there might come a time when you would be allowed to choose which one you want with the model you like. Google’s Android might be the underdog for now but there is a very real possibility that it would become a contender. Especially when you consider the huge community that are often formed around open source software.

Summary:
1. Windows Mobile is from Microsoft while Android was developed by Google
2. Windows Mobile is proprietary while Android is open source
3. Windows Mobile is relatively old and pretty established while the Android is pretty new
4. There are a lot of phones that uses Windows Mobile while there are only a handful running Android
5. There are a lot more programs available for Windows Mobile compared to Android