Mobile phone carriers have found that multiple OSes in their mobile phone offerings have made it difficult to roll out and grow new services, according to a New York Times story.

There are too many operating systems already and more are coming on stream, making things complicated for smaller software companies," said Tony Cripps, a senior analyst with a London telecommunications consulting firm.

Currently, the dominant OS on mobile phones is Symbian. On smart phones, Symbian has about two thirds of the market while Microsoft has 14 percent, RIM 7 percent, and Linux 6 percent.

While the carriers develop their own software for the most basic phones, they depend on the manufacturers for the OS on the more advanced phones and developers to build the carrier's key software. The number of different OSes now in use is forcing the carriers to decide which phones they want to roll their new services to, and they'd like to see that number of OSes remain small.

Now, Apple is bring its iPhone OS X into the game. "Mobile phone carriers are watching with more than passing interest because the new applications they are counting on to increase revenue and profit may make it to only a limited number of phones as software developers struggle to keep up with the different operating systems," the NYT reported.

With all this in mind, AT&Ts;move to the Apple iPhone could become a big advantage rather than a splintering factor. Mac OS X, accelerated OpenGL, and Cocoa provide a powerful basis for the development of new services, especially in the coming 4G era. While Apple has said that it expects to earn only 1 percent of the mobile phone market, OS X could become a key platform for AT&T's products and services down the road.