Remote mobile virtualization
Remote mobile virtualization, like its counterpart desktop virtualization, is a technology that separates operating systems and applications from the client devices that access them. However, while desktop virtualization allows users to remotely access Windows desktops and applications, remote mobile virtualization offers remote access to mobile operating systems such as Android. Remote mobile virtualization encompasses both full operating system virtualization, referred to as virtual mobile infrastructure (VMI), and user and application virtualization, termed mobile app virtualization. Remote mobile virtualization allows a user to remotely control an Android virtual machine (VM) or application. Users can access remotely hosted applications  with HTML5-enabled web browsers or thin client applications from a variety of smartphones, tablets and computers, including Apple iOS, Mac OS, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Windows desktop, and Firefox OS devices. Virtual mobile infrastructure (VMI). VMI refers to the method of hosting a mobile operating system on a server in a data center or the cloud. Mobile operating system environments are executed remotely and they are rendered via Mobile Optimized Display protocols through the network. Compared to virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), VMI has to operate in low bandwidth network environments such as cellular networks with fluctuating coverage and metered access . As a result, even if a mobile phone is connected to a high speed 4G/LTE network, users may need to limit overall bandwidth usage to avoid expensive phone bills. Most common implementations of VMI host multiple mobile OS virtual machines (VMs) on private or public cloud infrastructure and allow users to access them remotely via options such as Miracast™, the ACE Protocol or custom streaming implementations optimized for 3G/4G networks. Some implementations also allow for Multimedia redirection for better audio and video performance. Mobile operating systems hosted in the cloud are not limited to Android. Other operating  systems like Firefox OS and Ubuntu Mobile can also be used as VM instances depending on uses. Microservers based on existing mobile processors can also used to host Mobile VMs as they provide full GPU access for feature-rich user interfaces. To achieve higher density, VMI implementations can use customized versions of Android that minimize memory requirements and speed up boot times. Mobile app virtualization. Mobile app virtualization technology separates mobile applications from their underlying operating system using secure containers, and is analogous to RDSH and Citrix XenApp on desktops. Compared to VMI, Mobile app virtualization only virtualizes the individual  application and the user session rather than the full mobile operating system. Mobile app virtualization can offer higher density than VMI because one instance of the remote OS can serve multiple users, however the user separation is less secure than VMI and there is less context of a full mobile device. Using secure containers, each user session is isolated from one other and the output of the user session is rendered remotely to the end user. Mobile app virtualization also helps in scaling to large number of users as well as sharing hardware features like GPU and encryption engines across  all user sessions as they can be managed by the underlying operating system. Mobile app virtualization is functionally similar to VMI in that both solutions host individual users’ mobile sessions on remote servers; however, it differs from VMI in several important ways: The analysts at TechTarget have written excellent comparisons of desktop RDSH (analogous to MAV) and VDI (analogous to VMI), and many of the same observations hold true in comparisons of the mobile equivalents. Mobile gaming as a service. Gaming as a service provides on-demand streaming of video games onto mobile devices, game consoles, and computers. Games run  on a gaming company's server are streamed to end users' mobile devices. Traditionally, gaming as a service uses Windows-based VDI or Virtual Network Computing (VNC) technologies and uses PC-based GPUs. With mobile gaming as a service, gaming providers can host Android-based video games on microservers and stream these games over low-bandwidth cellular networks to mobile devices. With mobile gaming as a service, users can test out or play games without downloading and installing them on their devices. This is especially advantageous for mobile devices with limited disk space, RAM and computing power. Because the game  is executed remotely, even mobile devices with older generation GPUs can play mobile games with advanced 3D graphics. Mobile gaming as a service also provides a vehicle for Android application developers to reach a wider audience, including Windows Phone, Apple iOS, and Firefox OS device owners. Mobile gaming as a service can deliver free, advertising-supported games or subscription-based gaming services.