This is the 3rd installment to the series 'Operating Systems that power your mobile phones’. You can read the previous parts here :: Part 1 | Part 2 .

• Maemo :

This is yet another Operating System that has thousands of dollars riding on it. Nokia has high expectations from this OS. It will be making its debut by powering yet another highly anticipated product, the Nokia N900 PID. Nokia will do everything it can to push this one.

By the way with all the features that it has, it does look promising. Infact its going to be the closest thing to an actual desktop environment ever seen on a mobile platform.

It is basically a derivative of Debian Linux With oodles of desktop computer class application software support like the openoffice.org, Abi word processor, Pidgin, Mozilla powered browser etc. Security and software support is unparalled. It surely is the future till mobile devices become powerful enough to run proper desktop OSes.

Read more about it on wikipedia.

• Openmoko :
  

Openmoko is a geek's delight. Its not yet targeted at general users and is currently recommended to advanced users only (read developers and techies!).

Its got everything a geek could dream of (well almost everything). Everything here is open source right from the hardware to the software and everything is customizable. So, if you are into it, go ahead indulge yourself into building a new hardware module or a new software application and try it out. Because this is what openmoko is all about.

Neo 1973, Neo Free Runner are the devices that are being powered by Openmoko. You also get the flexibility of installing Android onto them.

Openmoko uses the Linux kernel , the X.Org server along with its own custom designed graphical user environment (based on GTK , Qt etc) so that small less powerful handheld devices can run it easily. Because of such high level of similarity in its core architecture, existing applications of Linux platform can be easily modified to run on this platform.

Read more about it on wikipedia.

• Montavista Linux :

Another Linux by product for the mobile and embedded platform. It has some pretty nifty features and focuses mainly on embedded systems such as automotive electronics, communications equipment , other electronics devices like digital musical instruments along with mobile phones.

Designed primarily to run on less powerful devices and be power-efficient at the same time, it does know how to survive with a bare minimum demand for resources. Recently, it managed to attain an unbelievable 1 second boot time.

It has been powering various mobile phones mainly of Motorola's. Motorola A760 was the first device to be powered by it. Since then it has powered various Motorola phones including the Motozine ZN5, before Motorola decided to go with Android for its latest Cliq.

Software support isn't great at all, I own one ZN5 and trust me it sucks in this department. Security is however tight. As of now, it seems that this OS doesn't have a bright future as a mobile phone OS.

Read more about it on wikipedia.

Finally we present here a pie-chart which shows the market share of all the OSes. You may also like to read this article featuring a comparative study of all the smartphones of today's world.

Pic courtesy : Wikipedia