MeeGo Vs. Android

by Micah McDunnigan
With a device, smartphone users are also selecting an operating system.

With a device, smartphone users are also selecting an operating system.

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Recent advances in smartphone technology have turned many phones into portable computers. While many systems for smartphones are closed-source and proprietary, there are an increasing number of open source systems that users can put on their phones. Among these are MeeGo and Android.

Sponsors and Linux

The Android operating system is officially maintained by Google, and the MeeGo operating system is officially maintained by Intel and Nokia. Both the MeeGo and Android operating systems are based on the Linux kernel. This is the same kernel that runs the desktop and laptop distributions of Linux. Because the Linux kernel has an open-source license, it dictates that anything that uses it must have open source components as well.

Sponsors and Licenses

MeeGo is a fully open-source operating system. This means that every line of code is publicly available for programmers to inspect, improve upon and incorporate into their own open-source applications. The Android operating system is largely open-sourced but contains many proprietary components whose source code is not released to the public. However, programmers can still contribute their own open source contributions for Google to incorporate into the open-source part of the operating system.

Architecture and Language

Although both systems are Linux-based, the higher level software for MeeGo and Android is significantly different. For one, they use two different programming languages: Android uses Java, whereas MeeGo uses C++ and the Qt graphical library in its development. The two systems also handle running programs differently: Android uses a virtual machine in which every program it runs is a separate instance. MeeGo uses a more traditional process-based approach.

App Support

As of this writing, Android had a much larger market share among smart phones. Because application developers always have a greater monetary incentive to develop applications for systems that have a larger market share, Android developed a much larger marketplace of applications before MeeGo did. As of 2011, Android had over 200,000 applications in its market, while MeeGo was still officially in development and had yet to establish an official applications store.

About the Author

Micah McDunnigan has been writing on politics and technology since 2007. He has written technology pieces and political op-eds for a variety of student organizations and blogs. McDunnigan earned a Bachelor of Arts in international relations from the University of California, Davis.

Photo Credits

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