Android races past Windows and Samsung’s Tizen as the most popular OS

At least a billion Android devices are being shipped each year while only 200 million Windows OS pieces are sold.
Android races past Windows and Samsung’s Tizen as the most popular OS
Android races past Windows and Samsung’s Tizen as the most popular OS
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In an interesting report on the internet usage numbers, it has been revealed that the Android OS has overtaken Windows as the most popular operating system. Stat Counter the agency that tracks these numbers worldwide, has informed that based on the figures for the month of March, more people seem to have used the Android platform to go online. Maybe the edge by which the OS is leading is still too small; however, the very fact that over a billion devices are being shipped each year with the Android OS, whereas only around 200 million Windows OS pieces are sold. Progressively, therefore, the situation is bound to move towards Android. According to a report on the Verge, this is the first time the usage numbers have been found to be indicating a higher level for Android over Windows.

The report refers to the fact that the statistics relating to the exponential increase in the number of people accessing the internet from their smartphones and other handheld devices as opposed to the PCs has been already doing the rounds. Particularly, over the last 2-3 years this paradigm shift has been occurring; but perhaps this report by Stat Counter dispels any doubts whatsoever. This is one of the reasons why the developer community has been under pressure to develop websites compatible with the mobile platforms. It is becoming obvious that outside of the iOS operated iPhones and iPads, Android seems to virtually dominate the devices.

Samsung’s Tizen seen to be vulnerable

While Android is straddling forward as described above, the in-house OS developed by Samsung seems to have run into some trouble. According to a report , Tizen OS, which Samsung uses on its smart TVs, GearS smartwatches and also on many of its smartphones also, may have serious security flaws. The report goes on to mention that in markets like India and Russia, Samsung sells most of its budget range of phones with Tizen OS only and the figure likely for 2017 is 10 million phones with this OS.

The security risk identified in the open source Tizen relates to the remote code execution, which directly enables hacking of the devices. As per an expert, “An exploit that allows remote code to be run on a device is a bit like the holy grail of hacking. If you can run your code without even having access to a phone, you can do almost anything to it”.  This, the expert feels, is the most serious of the 40-odd vulnerabilities he noticed in the Tizen OS. Researcher, Amihai Neiderman, mentions that the flaws are attributed to an earlier version of the OS, Bada, which Samsung had junked, from which the company appears to have migrated the codes and then written the codes for the new OS around it.

Samsung may have to do some serious introspection to get out of this hole and plug the security risks if it wants to avoid landing up with another quality issue with its phones and devices, just when the company has managed to come out of the Note 7 crisis.

Image: Ke-Shyam

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