Industrial computers built on Android
Tonya Hall talks to Andy Lowery, CEO of RealWear Inc., about a rugged, AR-based computer for designed for challenging environments.
Android accounts for about 85 percent of the global smartphone market; iOS accounts for virtually all of the rest. So it has stood for most of the past decade despite a host of failed challengers that entered the market before and after Android’s debut. But one operating system is adding tens of millions of users by bringing new functionality to a device that has been all but forgotten in the U.S.
KaiOS, which I first wrote about last April as an engine for minimalist phones, is an open source OS. It was spun out of an effort within TCL (owner of the Alcatel and BlackBerry phone brands) from the remnants of Firefox OS. It is well on its way to becoming the modern-day spiritual successor to Symbian, which was once a dominant operating system for feature phones. Indeed, HMD Global, the heir of the Nokia phone brand that was once Symbian’s greatest champion and that claims to still be the global leader in feature phones, is using KaiOS in its 8110 “banana” slider phone. However, its biggest success to date has been India’s JioPhone.