Microsoft/Nokia’s ad campaign pokes fun at iOS and Android

By Tyler Lee on 04/02/2012, filed in Home > CellPhones

Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform could be considered to be a competitor for iOS and Android, and it looks like Microsoft has wasted no expense at pushing their platform onto the masses in a recent campaign called Smartphone Beta Test. In a series of videos, Microsoft/Nokia appears to be poking fun at their iOS and Android competition by pointing out several of their competitors’ “flaws”. This includes the “death grip” which iPhone 4 owners refer to as the “Antennagate” incident, and OLED displays that are popular amongst Samsung and other Android manufacturers. Putting their rivalry aside for just a moment and assuming these videos aren’t an April Fool’s gag, these ads are pretty hilarious, so if you want to see the rest of the videos, head on down to the Smartphone Beta Test website linked above.

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Android: Android is the mobile operating system from Google. The software was originally built by a company called Android Inc, that was purchased by Google in 2005. From its modest debuts, Android has become a powerhouse that powers not only smartphones and tablet, but a host of other less high-profile devices and gadgets. Although Android is not a community-driven project, Google does release the source code as open-source under the Apache license. You can follow Ubergizmo on Android with Google Currents.

iOS: was once upon a time called iPhone OS, or "operating system", which is the software that provides all the basic device functionality and is the interface between the hardware and applications. iOS was introduced with the iPhone on January 9 2007, and it was originally not intended to be programmable by third parties. Steve Jobs had envisioned that developers could create Web Apps that would run in the browser. This changed less than one year after when the iPhone SDK (software development kit) was introduced in October 2007. Today, hundreds of thousands of apps have been created for this platform. iPhone OS became iOS on June 2010. Interestingly, both iPhone and iOS were former trademarks of Cisco, that Apple now uses under a license.

Microsoft: Microsoft is the company behind software like Windows, Microsoft Office and hardware like the Xbox and Kinect. The company was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. MS-DOS was the product that propelled Microsoft towards success, but it is Windows and Office that made it what it is today. Microsoft is currently engaged in a number of projects, including Windows 8, Windows Phone, Xbox, Office and the Azure cloud computing platform. the large majority of desktop computers run on Windows.

Nokia: Nokia is a Finnish communications company that was the largest phone vendor (per unit) between 1988 to 2012. The company's history go back to 1871 but the Nokia that we know today (the Nokia corporation) was founded in 1967 by the merger of three Finnish companies. It is then that Nokia worked on networking equipment and was ultimately involved in the launch of the first cellular network in 1981 (Mobira Oy). Nokia because a key developer of GSM, the standard that we all know today. Although Nokia still produces a range of phones that includes entry-level handsets and Symbian smartphones, the company is counting on the Windows Phone OS to regain the share that it once had. The current flagship Windows Phone device from Nokia is the Lumia 920.

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