Can Any Smartphone Platform Overcome the Android/iOS Duopoly?

Nerval's Lobster writes "The company formerly known as Research In Motion—which decided to cut right to the proverbial chase and rename itself 'BlackBerry'—launched its much-anticipated BlackBerry 10 operating system at a high-profile event in New York City Jan. 30. Meanwhile, Microsoft is still dumping tons of money and effort into Windows Phone. But can either smartphone OS — or another player, for that matter — successfully challenge Apple iOS and Google Android, which one research firm estimated as running on 92 percent of smartphones shipped in the fourth quarter of 2012? What would it take for any company to launch that sort of successful effort?"

Comments

I'd expect that...

[mark-t]

... if anybody knew the answer to that question, they'd probably already be filthy rich.

Re:I'd expect that...

[Farmer Pete]

I would give the answer No about 80% odds. It's very unlikely that RIM will be able to undo what they've already done. They took a monopoly and pissed it away. Every blackberry I used was worse than the one before it. My battery life went from 3 days with my first 8830, 1 day with my tour, and 16 hours with my bold. I enjoyed some features, (mail delivery and calendaring is much better on the BB than on Android), but the lack of apps was very disheartening. I really didn't mind the lack of a touch screen, and the keyboard was the perfect size for me. Even if the BB10 OS is soooo much better, the only way I would consider it is if the monthly fees were ridiculously cheap. Unfortunately, since RIM actually does something on the back end, they have the biggest price disadvantage of any manufacturer, and you are more likely to pay more than the competition, not less.

Lots of Money

[amiga3D]

I think Microsoft can. It's a matter of how many billions of dollars they want to bleed first. It worked with the XBox. Of course the XBox was also helped by Sony's stupidity.

Re:Lots of Money

[Spectre]

I think Microsoft can. It's a matter of how many billions of dollars they want to bleed first. It worked with the XBox. Of course the XBox was also helped by Sony's stupidity.

I was going to ask what you were smoking after reading the first sentence. Reading the rest of the post lends credibility to the possibility, though.

If Apple seriously screws up the next iPhone and Microsoft manages to come up with something far, far better than any OS they've put on a phone ever ... than they might stand a chance of Microsoft coming out over Apple.

It would be hard to beat out Android on all fronts, though ... there have been some seriously crappy Android phones, but I don't think the market has been without great Android phones from at least two different manufacturers in years. So that would require a failure from Google that applied to all manufacturers of Android phones, which doesn't seem too likely.

Re:Lots of Money

[drinkypoo]

I don't think Microsoft can. Microsoft phones have been around for a while now, and not only do they still suck but they're still not popular. AFAICT the Xbox 360 is a fairly decent platform all told, too bad about their overmonetization of Xbox Live but that's not enough to keep them from success. But Windows CE and all its incarnations have always sucked hard, and not in a good way. I imagine that Microsoft will keep up their unvarying record of mediocrity in the mobile space, so I doubt that Microsoft can ever become even the #2 player in mobile no matter how much they spend. They have never demonstrated an ability to make a phone that fucking works.

No

[SirJorgelOfBorgel]

As is always the case with /., if the subject is a question, the answer is no.

Unless you let enough time pass, then the answer to this case is most certainly yes. Nobody knows how much time that would be, though.

Better question

[NEDHead]

Can any smartphone platform overcome the Nokia/RIM duopoly?

Re:Better question

[localman57]

That's not a good comparison, though. Yeah, apple and google have eatten RIM's lunch, but even if they hadn't, they'd still be bigger because most of their growth was from sales to people who don't own smartphones. The market is saturated now. Even apple is starting to have problems competing with their own products that people already own. What we're talking about is something that's good enough to make people switch. Not new growth. And if you already have products you've bought through the app store for your platform, that's a hurdle. Your new offering has to be of more value that what you're walking away from.

Something we haven't seen yet.

[localman57]

I didn't know I really, really wanted an iPod until I saw one. Same with a cell phone, GPS, digital cameras, and palm pilots. It wasn't a stretch to imagine a device that integrated them all, but that took about another 7 years.

What it will take to break the duopoly is someone bringing me a new capability on the order of the iPod, cell phone, GPS, digital camera, or Palm Pilot. And , of course, it needs to be integrated with the phone. Just giving me a new user interface, or a way to stir facebook, twitter, and the rest of that crap together won't do it. NFC payment systems are trying to be this, but don't make it. Whatever it is will be a whole new class of feature.

Re:firefox or ubuntu

[exomondo]

how can JB not support your hardware?!? oh, because it's not using drivers written for linux, it's stuff written for dalvik.

So how do you think Ubuntu mobile runs on phones if the drivers were written for Dalvik? Especially given that Ubuntu uses the same drivers as Android. You seem very confused about what drivers and/or Dalvik are, Dalvik is a Virtual Machine, drivers do not run in Dalvik.