One of the world's top mobile operating systems is not any of those you're thinking about!

If we asked you for the top three mobile Operating Systems (OS) as measured by usage share chances are you’d say Apple's iOS, Google's Android and Nokia's Symbian.

And you’d be wrong!

In fact, according to NetMarketShare, the No. 2 spot doesn’t belong to Android but to a lesser-known and far less sexy platform - Oracle’s Java ME (The ME stands for Micro Edition).

A few months back Java ME was pushed into the No. 3 spot by Android, but it’s now retaken the No. 2 spot and is the fastest-growing mobile platform when measured in terms of usage share.

So what does Java ME power?

It’s the platform of choice for low-cost ‘dumbphones’ and is installed on some 3 billion mobile phones and PDAs.

According to Oracle, 31 times more Java phones ship every year than Apple and Android combined … that’s a massive number of devices.

Well, it seems that owners of these handsets are going online with them in increasing numbers.

NetMarketShare uses data captured from the 160 million unique visitors browsing some 40,000 Web sites it monitors for clients.

 

Source: ZDnet