We all have our own preference of mobile operating systems and this is a subject that really divides our readers sharply. Today we have news about a recent poll asking which was the best mobile OS and Android 4.0 topped the poll followed by Windows Phone 8 and iOS 6 in that order. Of course as two of these operating systems haven’t even been publicly released yet we wonder how you feel about these results.
Many of you will already know that Google’s Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) launched late last year and is still being slowly rolled out to devices running earlier Android operating systems. The amount of time this is taking has caused a certain amount of consternation amongst Android users, though it seems the benefits of 4.0 ICS are such that it still managed to come out on top. The two other mobile systems have been widely reported on recently as many details have just been revealed about both Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 and Apple’s iOS 6, both due for a public release in the fall, so it’s fair to say that many people have a reasonable idea of what is expected.
Before we give you the results of the poll we are going to say straight away that it was an informal poll conducted by Phone Arena with its readership. We cannot tell from the results whether Nokia’s Symbian, or RIM’s BlackBerry were included in the original question but as they received no votes at all according to the results, we imagine that readers were simply asked to choose between Android 4.0, Windows Phone 8 and iOS 6. We would also point out that maybe comparing an OS that is already widely available against two that are not is also a slightly skewed idea but nevertheless we found the results interesting enough to share with you.
In the Phones Arena poll with over 5000 respondents the winning mobile OS was Android receiving 48.62% of the vote. We would have expected either Android or iOS to top the poll, such is the split between our readership on these two operating systems, so you can imagine our shock/surprise to see that Windows Phone 8 came second in the Phone Arena poll results with 40.88% of the vote. iOS 6 trailed in third with only 10.6% of the vote.
Given the recent statistics we reported on the market share of the top smartphone platforms these results seem even more unlikely, (though we’re not for one moment suggesting that Phone Arena has made a mistake). In that earlier article we told how US Android smartphones accounted for 50.8% of the market at the end of March, while iOS smartphones (iPhone) accounted for a 31.4% share. Windows Phone smartphones only accounted for 4% of the market share. Of course the devices involved in these statistics do not feature the upcoming editions of Windows Phone 8 or iOS 6 but you would have imagined more parity between the amount of current smartphones being used on a platform to the platform that people would choose as their favorite.
It’s difficult to know what to make of these results then, other than maybe Phone Arena has a huge leaning towards the Windows Phone platform and its enthusiasts that we’ve never noticed or simply maybe people felt that Windows Phone 8 has so much promise that they voted accordingly. It will certainly be interesting to see the poll repeated once all three of these operating systems, and devices running on them, are being widely used.
We’d certainly be interested to hear your thoughts about these poll results. We’ve notice before that our readers are pretty evenly split between Android and iOS with other platforms not creating as much interest, so are there really that many Windows Phone enthusiasts out there? We’re not particularly worried about trying to compare operating systems that are not yet out with ones already being widely used, however we’re certainly intrigued to know your thoughts on present operating platforms so let us have your comments on this.