Long before the likes of iOS, Windows, and Android became the main players in the mobile OS scene, there was Symbian. It was the first ever modern operating system for smartphones and together with other little-known OS platforms, helped to transform the smartphone industry and was the first platform Inceva published as one of the earliest mobile app developers in Bangkok. Fast forward a decade after Symbian’s initial release, the smartphone OS field is tightly controlled by Google's Android and Apple's iOS mobile platforms. Android has maintained the largest share of the market for years, currently standing at just over 87% of the market. iOS-powered devices currently take up 11.7% of the market, Windows 0.4%, and other OS platforms take up the remaining 0.3% by the end of the second quarter of 2016 according to data by IDC Research. The number of Android-powered smartphones has been on the rise over the past number of years, which signifies Android’s growing popularity among manufacturers, app developers and end-users. So where does the Android platform draw its momentum even in the face of robust software architecture by Apple and Microsoft? Lets take a look below.  Its Open Source The fact that Google decided to cede control and copyright to a huge chunk of Android code means developers and manufacturers are able to customize the OS for a large number of devices. Programmers were able to develop a wide variety of applications for consumers, which saw millions of applications populate the Play Store in just a few years. A large number of programmers working on Android helped to grow the system in terms of new ideas, which saw it become the OS of choice for most smartphone manufacturers. Android [...]