The rapid development of the mobile industry since the start of new millennium led to much more extensive usage of mobile devices than desktop computers. Fast-developing technologies of wireless networking led to the excessive need of a device, which can search any info on the web conveniently, be a decent communicational tool and be able to adapt to different needs of customers.

The device which fully fulfils this need is a smartphone, which is being widely used today by the majority of the global population. In this thesis, the author digests the tools, which allows smartphones to work appropriately, give consumers a pleasuring experience while using them and run all the operations and data stored on them. These tools are mobile operating systems – platforms, which allow all those things and even more. In this research, the author investigates the historical development of mobile operating systems, which put a mark in the history of the industry. By digesting three cases of Nokia, Blackberry and Microsoft, the author explains what were the selling points, that succeeded and managed to popularise each mobile operating system globally among consumers and gadget manufacturers and what were the reasons that caused their global downfall.

A separate chapter of this research is dedicated to a survey regarding customer values and customer opinions about mobile devices and mobile operating systems. This part is concluded to analyse what are the key features customers thrive on, and what do they value the most about the software they use daily. In the last chapter, the author discusses recent events around mobile operating systems development. By concluding all previous chapters and giving a subjective look based on given facts for those events, the author invites the reader to a discussion about the future of Mobile OS for the consumer market.