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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?"
...if giant asteroids hit Mountain View, South Korea, and Cupertino at the exact same moment.
... if anybody knew the answer to that question, they'd probably already be filthy rich.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
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.
Can any smartphone platform overcome the Nokia/RIM duopoly?
No.
(Blablabla padding bla. bla bla.)
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.
there were a lot of nice features about the ubuntu phone... but the one thing i disagreed with was the lack of a lock screen... at least as far as i could tell
Presenting the EyePhone
All a company has to do is to come up with something that none of the big companies have thought about, patent the shit out of it so they have exclusive rights and then they will have people falling over themselves to buy it while everyone else stands around saying "Why didn't we think of that?". The big companies do not have a lock on innovation.
But can they do it is a different question from "How easy is it to do?"
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
If you are still thinking about just a smartphone OS then you pretty much left with no options.
However, there is a huge potential for any OS/framework that can tap into Cars, TVs, Office Cubes, Kitchen appliances..
The Z10 wont be available for sale in the USA until "sometime" in March. The CEO blamed this on the slow and methodical process US carriers use to verify new phones on their network, yet he failed to mention that the testing delay was actually because RIMM was so late in delivering production-final samples to the carriers.
I think a big difference here is in how large of an impact these purchasing decisions can have on your everyday life. For game consoles, at most the decision only affects which games you can play. With a smartphone, it impacts the games you play, how you use the web, how you keep in touch with business/friends/family, etc.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
if we are legally prohibited from unlocking our phones to make any modifications to the software or firmware?
When Android hit the market, Blackberry was just introducing the Blackberry Storm, and it was kind of a big deal. The refinement of Android and the phones it ran on was absurd. I think the biggest thing that's changed is that you now have much smoother interactions with phones and computers. I think it may be in Blackberry's interest to try to work with big media providers (Amazon, perhaps) to try to match the ecosystems Google and Apple have formed.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
The thing that makes Windows stay is not "because it's better." It's because it has critical mass and the cost of moving away from it is too painful and complicated.
Smart phones in the form of Android and IPhone have not quite reached that point but they will soon. At the moment, there are no "can't live without it" apps though the games are a kind of resistance to change already.
Integration with business will be a critical piece for any smartphone challenger to offer. Blackberry has done this while offering fantastic security. IPhone and Android are wonderful distractions, but they haven't done anything to become entrenched... even the beloved and expensive iDevice turns out to be disposable within a year or two. And that's kind of the problem. They are disposable... dispensable... replaceable. And this is done by the carriers "by design" so they can keep selling new phones and extending contract obligations. This is not particilarly compatible with business interests.
So like the PC before it, find a way to integrate with business as RIM did before and you've got a winner.
It wouldn't hurt anyway. Seriously though. They had better either do something remarkable or have some great features. For example, I'd pay good money for a phone with a physical scrolling wheel. Ditto for sound. Or an On/Off switch that didn't make you wait for the computer to contemplate its navel would be worth something too. Sometimes you can't beat physical controls. Nobody has yet done scrolling right and you always end up clicking something you wish you hadn't. Truly painless linking to Outlook and other phones (all the other phones) would be another awesome. By painless, I mean, 100% easy and without stupid arbitrary limitations of content length of anything. Battery life that mattered would do it. If the phone lasted even three days between charges, that would matter a lot. Voice recognition that was less stupid than Siri.
There are a lot of things they could have done. They won't have done any of the ones that would help, I expect. Like Microsoft, they'll probably solve a bunch of problems that neither I nor any other customer actually had.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Well. They have to find a very unique angle to be able to do that. Either they can go for superior hardware. Or they go for cheep, secure, user controlled or something that neither Apple or Google will provide.
I had a smartphone when Nokia had a monopoly on them. Even the almighty Ericsson wasn't able to make headway, albeit into what was a very small market. Palm then did relatively well, before doing its usual disappearing act, and then RIM took over.
The difference between then and now, of course, is that Smartphones are now a big thing, rather than something nerds appreciate (while being bizarrely ignored by the marketing geniuses at Nokia et al who insisted that only business people on the go would want these kinds of devices. No wonder they never went mainstream.)
The simple truth is we have Apple who popularized the concept, largely by concentrating on making the UI touch, rather than stylus or keyboard, friendly, and Google, who produced the first genuinely open mobile platform. While these are both awesome, the only degree to which people are tied to either platform beyond loyalty and brand recognition are apps, and given the numbers of people who do, indeed, switch back and forth from iOS to Android, I don't think it's the case that the app issue is that significant.
Sometime to look at, as an example, is Amazon's Android. For developers, it's the same operating system as Google's version. For end users though, it might as well be an entirely different system. Your collection of Google Play software just isn't going to run on it. And yet it's popular.
If Amazon can do that, then there's little reason to suppose that another company can't do the same thing. The major issue is that the companies that have, thus far, don't seem to be very good at it, and perhaps even are hampered by a very poor image. Blackberrys are what people used to use. Windows is that unreliable piece of crap we swear at every day. HP? Same problem. Nokia had a chance, as a very popular maker of phones that were even once admired for their design and innovation (OK, that was about 10-15 years ago) but bizarrely switched to Windows at precisely the point they had an OS ready to go.
So yes, there's an opening. The question is whether someone will bother to produce something sufficiently decent that phone makers will be willing to adopt. I haven't seen that yet.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Then you'll never have it. Catering to freetards is not profitable.
How is a nexus phone locked down?
I have a Debian chroot is that not enough?
The problem with ubuntu (and any new mobile OS in the past few years) is that they do not innovate, they simply copy and add a few gimmicks.
Developer tools need to be available WAY before the launch. They need to be free. Pay developers for startup apps. Make an office suit, a few games, etc. and make them freely available for everyone. Make them run android binaries (last I've heard, the dalvik code is open source). See those cloud services others charge for? Make them free.
Let your hardware partners go crazy. Don't impose guidelines, just make sure all binaries will run. The rest, leave it to them so they are not all clones of one another (like windows phones).
Be ready to spend a few millions without return of investment.
And above all, don't try to keep your competition out, invite them in. Google develops for iOS and with that they give out a good company image to iOS users. Maybe those that love the new Maps app will want to get it on android without the limitations. Having a full set of google services would be a plus.
someone at some point in time will come out with something better.. IOS is actually sort of boring platform in my opinion it just has all the apps and the phone is very functional.. There are niches yet to be filled.
Aging population + Jitterbug phone = THE FUTURE
...if they can leverage the enterprise. Our support people have about given up on Android, too many flavors to support. I'm not saying they will pull it off, I don't think they can get away with their old tricks to take over the market, but I wouldn't rule them out either. RIM is toast.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Out of all the contenders, (Open WebOS, BlackBerry, Windows, Mozilla, Ubuntu) I don't think any of them have a chance, Not unless lawsuits end up shutting down Android or making it entirely unsuable. I think the business model Google has setup shields them from the fray as a monopoly, especially with Amazon offering up their own Android Appstore in direct competition. Google and the manufacturers have more people and more resources and can iterate faster than Apple ever can, and none of the other upstarts can even hope to invest enough on their own to make a catchup play. I don't think Windows Phone with it's somewhat integrated position with Windows 8 even stands a realistic chance.
..with dynamic form factor. The next generation OS / device will be "AI on Demand". It will have the ability to aquire "over the air" expertise to become your chauffer, your chef, dog, massuer, masseur, a wife or a nurse. Your fetish on disposal. Cheers to that!!
I come to Slashdot only to read sigs. One you are reading is mine.
I love your business plan: Make everything free and spend millions on it with no returns. You should set up a Kickstarter page immediately. I know you'll do well!
What kind of idiot story is this? Android and IOS just got done destroying the Microsoft/RIM duopoly... Suddenly they are the underdog deserving of our sympathy? They are doing poorly because they suck... not because they are being crushed by Google/Apples corporate might.
Did the submitter read this blog posting from an analyst first?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Its laughable for Microsoft or RIM to believe they can claw their way into the top 2, and I mean every other smartphone OS developer would have to have a solid year of chronic brain farts for FireFox or Ubuntu to even break 4th place.
The fight is going to be for #3 for a good long time.
Its not impossible for Apple or Google to slip (will give it to Apple to fall from grace before Google any day), just look at how quickly RIM dropped from nearly 50% global market penetration to less then 1%. But I can safely say that nothing released, about to be released, or even hinted at is capable of breaking the top 2..
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
The early blackberrys were highly optimized text messaging machines...everything was aimed at maximizing battery life.
Once you start bringing in big bright high def screens, arbitrary apps, fluid video, fancy gui elements, etc. you pretty much by definition are going to use more battery keeping the whole thing running.
You could have 3 days of battery life now if you were willing to go back to the feature set of the 8830.
I just got my second Windows Phone today. I really like it. I don't care about all of the "Apps" because it does everything I need right out of the box. I think that a well integrated OS like Windows Phone 8.0 doesn't need to rely on millions of "apps" to be able to sway customers.
I don't respond to AC's.
Likely? No.
Once any one or two players get to a majority like that, they typically only lose share if 1) they start being stupid, lazy, or ineffective, or 2) something drastically different comes along.
Related to #1 is when there is a strong competitor that gets incrementally better over time and overtakes the leader, but that usually only happens when the market is relatively young and there's lots of room for improvement. We saw it early on with battles over spreadsheets and word processors, and later with things like Quark being retarded for years and letting Adobe eat their lunch.
People don't change when "OMG it's 8% faster and 2 grams lighter!" because change takes effort and brings with it uncertainty. What good is a 1% productivity gain if it takes you a week to get to that point? People change when there is a SUBSTANTIAL gain to be had -- either a 50-100% improvement in some area (usually performance or stability) or a whole crop of new features: "I didn't used to be able to take pictures or listen to music with my phone, now I can."
People still use many-years-old computers because they do just about everything. They evolved from text on monochrome screens to high-res full-color screens, sound playback, video playback -- from 160x120 to 1080p -- and they do 3D gaming. Not much else left to be done there except to make them smaller and cheaper. Cell phones when from brick phones that could only show you the digits you dialed, to the same thing in a flip-phone form factor, to candybars with LCD screens, caller ID, and address books; then texting and cameras, then smartphones with good cameras, browser, email, and all the rest. Now we are where we were with computers a few years ago: not much left to be done there. If you have a current smartphone of ANY kind, you have a very capable device that isn't that different from the rest.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
That's because they make so much more to eat when they fall
1) Augmented reality, overlay virtual information on the real world.
2) 3D motion sensing, like the "leap motion" device.
3) Ability to dock with something that has common ports (USB in, video out, etc.) and turn into a full-fledged computer with full sized keyboard/mouse while also charging the mobile device.
4) Better battery. (like 10x better)
Uhhh, no, it uses drivers written for linux, it also runs ARM ELF binaries just fine - it's Linux down there. How else would it run chrooted Debian?
The problem with updates is that drivers for most parts of devices, especially radio parts, are very much proprietary and patent-encumbered.
And yep, that'll limit your Ubuntu phone happiness. Unless there'll be profitable completely open source hardware, you won't see much of those phones and you'll get same problems with updates.
You can unlock and try to flash newer Android version on many unofficially supported devices, and you might even get it _somewhat_ working, but what use it will be with barely working reverse engineered radio drivers and preliminary GPU support?
I love your business plan: Make everything free and spend millions on it with no returns. You should set up a Kickstarter page immediately. I know you'll do well!
Isn't that exactly what Google did with Android? And now they rule the game?
It looks as if his business skills are more aligned with reality than yours.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
The new Blackberry OS has some interesting functionality (reminiscent of webOS in some areas) that I could see some people really going for. In particular the separation between business/personal could reduce BYOD concerns a lot (though I think it should also be able to have separate sim cards as well).
With the new OS, I think it's reasonable to give Blackberry another chance, and so the question becomes what it would take for them to actually succeed.
-1997: can anubody overcome the DOS/Epoc dominance
-2000: can anybody overcome the Palmos dominace
-2002: can anybody overcome the WIndows CE dominance?
-2005: can anybody overcome the Symbian dominance?
-2009: can anybody overcome the Iphone/Blackberry dominance?
Yes, at some point sombody will. Nothing is as fluctuating as PIM devices. They have a well defined set of apps which really will make my buying decision, and i am not hesitant to change the OS. Did that two or three times. If QNX proves to be solid and the the important apps will be right on the next RIM device, why not to switch? If microsoft puts a decent version of mobile office on Windows 8 phones and they dont suck otherwise, why not buy one? If Samsung decides to put another Linux-based and more or less open OS onto the HW which i would have bought with Android, and e.g. the power sonsumption is lower, why not switch?
The things which mattered for my first PIM/Mobile computing devices were: Price, usability and battery life. Nothing changed for me up to now.
Symbian used to be THE ecosystem in mobile phones, and look where is at now. iOS and then Android hit big, both with their own ecosystems, and have most of the market by now, but it could change. Windows Phone want to be the next one, but i think it won't have good chances, not sure how much compatibility will be between desktop and mobile programs, and the clean cut they did with "old" win 7.x phones and apps is not a good signal).
But could be an incoming new ecosystem. Blackberry 10, Sailfish, Ubuntu Mobile and others are getting QT/QML as main api, apps could be ported between all of them. A lot will be linux based, so apps, even desktop ones, compiled for ARM could run (and ubuntu will have a big app base if is just for that). And some of them will be able (not sure how well, but able at least) to run android apps, so "legacy" apps wll be available. And they could have another way to get an userbase, not only with manufacturers including them, but being able to install those OS on Android phones (like i.e. will be possible to install Ubuntu Mobile in Nexus phones, or Sailfish on the N9), very much like is be possible to install CyanogenMod.
At that time, the two dominant players in the server market were Unix and Novell. Microsoft's share of the market grew at the same time that Linux's share grew.
Wait wait wait...
You're complaining about issues about choosing the OS you install on your device... and you have an i device, and you complain you're not updated?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I hope you re-buy your devices randomly since there are arbitrary features left out -- with nothing having to do with the devices capabilities, and everything to do with making you buy the next version. (See anyone who's smart enough to hack / jb their device to unlock all features, and they also have to put in a TON of effort by some random people -- finding a bug in software is usually harder than tweaking an open source build)
It's too late for this round. For the same reason that no one can replace Windows on the desktop, nothing will displace iOS/Android on "slabs with a large touchscreen". There are too many applications written, too many people who rely on them, they will not switch for something that's more or less the same, but different. People will switch only if it's something radically different, a new category of devices, just like Apple created with the original iPhone or the iPad, they're just not comparable to previous feature phones (or even previous "smartphones"). Windows Phone and BB10 are DOA, no one wants them, it's too late. They're like the DRDOS and the OS/2 of smartphones.
Sure, if you have the worlds mostlucrative ad network behind you, throwing off billions of dollars per year, then yes, you can do that.
It's all about apps. Windows phone 8 works well, and I'm sure the Z10 does too, but there's no apps. I demo'd an ATIV S recently and the device was fine but no swype keyboard, google maps, NES/SNES emulator, banking apps, google talk, teamviewer, webex, torrent software, upnp player/server, games, etc, etc. So why would I switch from android to a less functional device?
It's a bit of a conundrum these folks who were late to the party are in. They need a large user base to generate developer interest, while also needing developer interest to generate a large user base. And early reviews of BB10 seem to be demonstrating this exact scenario again (no google maps? really RIM? really?).
The next ground breaking feature for smart phones is going to be Google Now. With the competition still struggling to catch up on core functionality and app support I'm predicting a very healthy future of market domination for Android.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
The battle will really be over the non-smartphone users.
Android has an Achilles heal. It's old, immature and hard to update. It reminds me of Windows XP in terms of user experience and platform vulnerability. It's dug into the market well, but it's only mature enough for "smartphone" users who readily work around quirks and ill behaviors... not enough to grab the non-smartphone user.
This is why iOS will hold on to it's lead while it can maintain the premium smartphone image befitting of its contemporary Mac OS X. That said, "premium smartphone" is the iOS Achilles heal. A cheap, hobbled iPhone won't grab the non-smartphone user either.
BB already lost it's page to Microsoft in the Enterprise market.
More importantly, while MS isn't that popular in the US, it's got a jump on the non-smartphone users overseas... which I bet will only spread. It's got the base OS maturity (security) of Windows 7, the UI consistency of it's contemporary Windows 8 desktop, and the price range to make them accessible.
My wife traded her clunky droid for a WP8, and both our moms (our kids' grandmothers) love their Windows Phones ... this strikes me as good indicator that Windows Phone could bring the non-smartphone market into the smartphone era, eating up that market as it goes, if given the chance.
if it's actually significantly better and backed by a big company, it could.
I don't see anything like that on the horizon. I don't think Ubuntu, Firefox, or Blackberry for phones are sufficiently better to be able to compete.
When the HTC G1 with Android hit the scene, many people doubted the chance of success of Android against the market dominated iPhone.
Recently, I came across a review of the Ubuntu phone initiative. The review author signs off by saying that he / she is uncertain of its ability to make him / her put down their Android phone. It made me laugh, I remember the exact same statement ending in "iPhone".
"So don't get programmed by anybody but yourself" --Bill S. Preston, Esquire
Back when only corporations had computers, Jobs and Woz came out with a computer for the average person.
Smartphones and tablets are almost completely under the control of corporations,
I'm probably missing the snark there, but if you're being serious, "completely under the control of corporations", in that you get what {Apple, Samsung, etc.} make and don't get a choice, is different from "only corporations had computers". Note, BTW, that "...the computer for the rest of us"...
so maybe it's time for somebody to come out with one that is modular, that the average person can build and have full control over.
I would buy one.
...wasn't exactly "one that is modular, that the average person can build and have full control over"; the original Mac was a bit of a sealed box.
I doubt the average person gives a damn about being able to build their own smartphone, even if it were possible to make one that "the average person can build" (electronics manufacturing is a bit more complicated than back in the 1970's).
I disagree. First, it's obvious Cannonical's vision with Ubuntu Phone is to eventually do what Motorola tried to do with the docking station. This would turn a Ubuntu Phone into a Ubuntu "general purpose computer". Plus, I'm really hoping the phone/tablet market goes the way of the PC market and starts having more free/unlocked versions, where a general purpose configuration would do well.
Look..
Could anyone break the Crackberry monopoly? Well yes, iPhone could, and quite spectacularly too.
Could anyone break the Symbian phone system, with all its apps? Yep, iPhone again.
Could anyone break the iPhone monopoly? Yes, Android did that.
You can't judge the future just by what is now, folks. People have tried that before:
"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication."
-- William Orton, president of Western Union, in 1876, when Alexander Graham Bell tried to sell the company his invention.
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-- Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment, in 1977.
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
Here's the key: apps and/or app stores.
A lot of small businesses, such as the one I work for, have built some apps for iPhone and Android. However, our budget simply doesn't allow us to build an app for every single phone out there. For example, we're definitely not going to bother building one for Windows or Blackberry. We also have an internal app that runs on Android and we won't be porting that either.
So, I think the best way to get a new phone out there is to steal an ecosystem. Either an entire app store or make porting the apps as simple as the click of a button.
----- obSig
The fact that Google can do that means that anyone who wants to seriously take a slice of that pie better darned do so too.
Nobody is going for fork over serious sums of cash for development tools for a platform that may well (and likely will) be a flop.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
No guidelines is what is damaging Android. Too many devices to test for, too many screen sizes, compbinations of buttons etc etc. The opposite is a better plan as far as I see - very strict guidelines, at least in early statges.
I doubt any one smartphone will be able to "overcome" the current situation. Microsoft's offerings are, as is so often the case, a joke.
Google have been clever with their liberal licensing of Android - something similar to what happened with the IBM BIOS in the 1980s, except this time no one needs to clean-room reverse engineer anything. Therefore we're seeing more and more clones, if that is the right term, and it is becoming increasingly irrelevant who the hardware is made by.
That given, any new upstart is going to have three options:
I know which option I would choose were I in that position.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
The cellphone as a computer is something that might happen, and might benefit those smartphones that come with a full-blown OS (and here is an opportunity for ubuntu). The user would plug the device to a monitor and a keyboard and start working. We already have 1.5GHz processors, +1Gb RAM, and graphics chipsets that support OpenGL. We might see in the future clever ways to dock the smartphone into a monitor and keyboard (maybe wireless displays are in the future, but I doubt it because of bandwidth required). Maybe a dock that has the shape of laptop, only it provides the keyboard and display, but nothing else inside.
Android and iOS might be at a disadvantage for that, because those OS's weren't borne with desktop grade multitasking, file management, etc. (android has multitasking but only has windows in some samsung products), iOS wants you to forget that files even exist.
Smartphones already have: gps, bluetooth, wifi, 3g, accelerometers, compasses, gyroscopes, sd storage, hd displays, opengl, lots of RAM, more than 16gb storage, etc. What more could you add to them?? They are almost a PC, so why not use them as a PC that already has the capacity to fulfill most casual users needs.
On the cost issue, for WP8 or BB10 to take the market, they need to learn a lesson from cheap android phones and cheap S40 phones, that cover most of the needs of its users while remaining affordable, and even sometimes having more battery. If they don't come up with sub $100 devices (with subsidy), they are simply not going to penetrate latin america and india.
In the short term, meaning within the next year or two, no. In the long term, however, of course it's a yes. I don't really understand why people are so narrow-thinking especially since leaders have been unseated over and over again. Microsoft, Nokia, Blackberry being the most relevant examples to this discussion. Apple's dominance so far has been quite brief and Android's has been even shorter.
We're talking about industries that are evolving at a rapid pace, not just in terms of technology but in terms user interface. This isn't like the auto industry which is very mature and exceedingly difficult to break into without a very unique niche. And even the players with very compelling offerings, Tesla and Fisker, are struggling to get established. The investment costs are massive and these guys are stuck doing a lot of the development themselves. It isn't like any of the smartphones makers who are all buying the same hardware from a handful of players and can have a device up and running relatively quickly. This places the focus on user experience and integration.
All you need is a scenario where Apple and Google start lagging and the competition offers something legitimately compelling with all the essential boxes checked off. That means a robust and rapidly growing app selection and partnerships with all the relevant players. In some ways I think it's beginning to happen. The fact that we're even discussing this is a indication that the shift is occurring. Of course, that doesn't mean Apple or Google couldn't rekindle interest in the platform at some point.
Shortly? No.
dont forget 15 years ago there was no google. If google can do it, anyone can do it.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
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.
Any asteroid big enough to wipe out Cupertino is going to wipe out whatever economy is necessary to buy new WinPhones and RIMs. No, I think the winners of that civilization-altering event will be the makers of survivalist communication gear like walkie-talkies.
iOS is vulnerable, because Apple can screw up. Apple can screw up the hardware, the OS, the App Store, or carrier relations, and cripple it as a result. And somebody else can become #2.
Android, on the other hand, is set. If a handset manufacturer screws up, it'll just get eaten by one of the others. If Google screws up the OS, it'll get forked from the source to the previous version. Google Play turns bad, there's Amazon's Appstore, and plenty more less well-known alternatives. There isn't any one controlling entity to screw up carrier relations, either.
Major shifts in consumer desire are rarely brute-forced in the world. It takes a combination of having the right product at the right time. It's hard enough to do with untested markets, but much more difficult in existing ones. I think a shift is becoming more possible, with the smartphone market, but only because consumers are starting to lose interest in the current devices, and might be receptive to something new. Who knows what that will look like, but I doubt it will be another 3x5 touchscreen smartphone with hundreds of thousands of apps available (really need to move away from this whole quantity over quality thing...).
you can bet it will come from Samsung. Samsung's the only phone manufacturer the world not named Apple that's making money, and the only reason it's able to do that is by relying on an operating system controlled by the company that owns Motorola. That's not a situation Samsung can be happy with.
Prediction: Samsung will fork Android, buy Android, or build its own OS from scratch.
The problem with ubuntu (and any new mobile OS in the past few years) is that they do not innovate, they simply copy and add a few gimmicks.
That's exactly it! What compelling reason is there that people would want to switch from Android or iOS - the established market players - to Ubuntu Mobile, Windows Phone, Blackberry OS, Tizen, MeeGo, webOS, et. al? None of these have the 'killer feature' and that's why they fail.
Yes. Nobody has a lock on the enterprise space. This area also happened to be RIM's and Microsoft's strongsuit at one point in time. And lest you discount RIM, my gut feeling is that RIM is still very focused whereas Microsoft is spread thin.
Yes. Next stupid question please.
Can you really say there's a duopoly between handheld OSes when one of them is Linux?
IT'S GPL, it's basically a non-entity in the proprietary sense. If you wanted to make a smart phone that ran Android apps, you could just fork Android, I think...
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
Blackberry had the lead, they pissed it away by pretending nothing could unseat them. There really is no chance of a comeback.
Businesses aren't stupid. They can act like iPhone owners are kids and all thats going to do is piss off the guy making the decision and he's going to respond by calling them on his iPhone and telling them how out of touch with reality they are and he'll just keep his iPhone.
Assuming nothing changes, your wife will move off of an iPad within the next couple of years as well. No business continues to 'run' on an iPad for long. Many have tried, but it doesn't last. My wife is a doctor, she would lose her fucking mind if some moron told her she had to do her medical notes on an iPad, so would pretty much all the rest who actually have to do shit on a regular basis. She might carry an iPad around to read some data, but it simply not ergonomic for data input, which is something workers do actually have to do.
Blackberry has proven they are incapable of writing software that can integrate well with anything. Ask any poor bastard who has had to deal with BES. And why should they have to? Everyone elses phones integrate with the existing infrastructure in various ways with little extra effort, even the iPhone.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Two things:-
1) The Linux kernel does not need to be compiled with all the available drivers that we're used to having in desktop distros. There's no reason that Ubuntu can't use a stripped down kernel just like the one powering your router or any embedded device.
2) Ubuntu on mobile uses Android's Linux kernel, already optimised for mobile hardware.
I love your business plan: Make everything free and spend millions on it with no returns. You should set up a Kickstarter page immediately. I know you'll do well!
Isn't that exactly what Google did with Android? And now they rule the game?
It looks as if his business skills are more aligned with reality than yours.
No, it's not what Google did with Android. Google has enough money in the bank to do stuff "because they feel like it", and see if it could be successful. They weren't banking on Android's success, and they'd continue to be making billions if WebOS was in second place. When you can start from *that* starting line, it's much easier to make it to second place.
From there, it was a timing issue - Apple was the phone that everybody wanted, but at least in America, many of them were either locked into multi-year contracts with their present carrier, or were loyal to them - many frequent domestic travelers swear by Verizon, because for all the Big Red does to royally screw them over, they frequently are the only carrier to have towers in obscure places, and for all of CDMA's faults, it did a much better job of routing calls through multiple towers (thus reducing the number of dropped calls) than the EDGE flavors of GSM. Resultantly, those who didn't want to give up their carrier were prime candidates for the Motorola Droid* when Verizon released it - the billion dollar marketing campaign Verizon did to launch the handset and its then-more-powerful interface didn't hurt the cause either, and neither did the generally-well-liked Google logo. Android took advantage of the fact that Apple and AT&T had an exclusivity contract and a limited feature base to springboard it to popularity. HTC and Samsung stepped up the game, and that's the nutshell version of how Android got the timing right.
UbuntuPhone, Windows Phone, BB10, and UnknownPhone all share similar problems. Windows Phone has a pile of money behind it, but Microsoft has to care if it succeeds and it suffers from a brand with a stigma - I swear if it was green themed and called the "X Phone" it'd have double its present market share. BB10 has some money behind it, but BlackBerry desperately needs it to succeed and it too has a bit of a brand issue ("Who makes the battery inside a Blackberry when they made on which you can't pull it out? Energizer - the alkaline battery will long outlast your system uptime!"). UbuntuPhone has some pocket change behind it, but not a well known brand. UnknownPhone has to start from the ground up with everything. None of these brands have the winning formula of "we don't care if we succeed", "we have a mountain of cash behind us that continues to grow", "we are well liked by our existing customers", "we're affordable", and "people are being held back from getting the phone they really want, so we'll be the fallback until we have enough buzz behind us".
That, however, will not stay that way forever.
Just call it the iBerry. It will sell . . . dozens.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Fashion Trend... so good marketing is the only answer. Like Nike vs Reebok.
Wow, the Win/Apple shills have all the mod points today!
i am hoping ubumtu comes out very strong.
I think you meant to write Ewebuntu.
And no - most of their fanbois already own iPhones
Considering that most of the world's population don't own smart phones I'd say Firefox - maybe... it's too early to say. No reason I can think of that Android will fuck up - and it's trivial for Chinese and Korean manufacturers to create lighter versions of it... so the real question is, as the "world" less and less means "Western", is there any real future for iPhones?
Microsoft? Even if Steve "Kiss of Death" Ballmer got a brain transplant from Martians, Microsoft still couldn't produce a phone that a statistically relevant number of people would use if it was given away. Seriously - have you seen the Windows 8 promotions? - The ones they keep emailing me feature a hipster with with a face like a cat's arse and the rest of those idiots with their dumb sunglasses and stupid stripey clothes is the cleverest thing about 8. Even if I repeatedly hadn't try to make myself like the piece of shit laptop, with the steaming pile of wet shit of an OS I got as an "incentive" to sell the crap to clients "at a price you can't beat" - just seeing the promotions would turn me off it.
I'd be surprised if by the end of next year half the phones (mobile or landline) on the planet weren't be running Android?
It's a well-worn path.
USA/Russia - War (Good vs Cheap), Detente (Nuclear brinkmanship, Cold war), Disrupt (new economies), Decline (high cost of supporting existing infrastructure/policies)
RIM/Nokia - War (Good vs Cheap), Detente (stuck to their product lines), Disrupt (Touch replaced T9 / Qwerty), Decline (high cost of losing customers & late entry to new markets)
Apple/Google - War (Good vs Cheap), now settling into a comfortable Detente. They're not stupid. They both know there will be a Disruption. It won't come from Microsoft and Blackberry making "me too" phones.
Apple will try and do it themselves, with loads of secret R&D. Google are trying to do it with loads of public R&D (driverless cars, Glass, Nexus Q, Ingress).
But it's inevitable. One day, some other company will blindside them and Disrupt them utterly.
If Microsoft is really seriou about having a successful mobile presence this late to the party then they need to be bold. Lose money with high end, top of the line hardware in their phones to start out, they've got the cash to spare. Give away the entire XBox catalog as an enticement for IOS/Android users, if they don't win over the users with games the others can't offer now, there will never be a good enough reason to ever switch to MS. Anything else but a bold move like this they might as well concede the mobile market to the existing dominant players and get out now.
1- Headsets
2- Building a userbase and tying it to your ecosystem (and your app/movie/whatever) store.
3- Ad network for your now ubiquitous smartphone ecosystem.
If you only plan to offer what the others already do, then you'll die a very painful death.
Google is pretty scary environment to trust your life to. Where you work, where you sleep, where you eat, who you talk to, what you say, what pictures you take, how fast you drive, how often you visit your lover....
If someone can figure out a way to be more open source than Google (Android being an open platform from the perspective of hacking/programming/admin) and also be more safe and secure than Google, then there is a chance.
Someone like RIM? Not a chance. Google has set the bar very high with open standards.
Microsoft did all that too, they released the dev tools well in advance, they're free, and they've run lots of contests and whatnot to try and get people to develop for it, doesn't seem to be working.
The success of Android was pretty much identical to the success of the iPhone in the first place, they found a market segment that wasn't being catered to(specifically people who wanted a smart phone that wasn't crap and couldn't or didn't want to pay for an iPhone). That segment allowed them to succeed well enough that they're probably only a year or so away from being able to compete directly with Apple for the top end market share. Apple did exactly the same thing barring the pay issue, they marketed to people who wanted a smartphone that didn't suck.
That doesn't mean the current duopoly can't be broken, of course it can, app stores aside, people are extraordinarily fickle about these kinds of devices and all it wouldn't take much to massively swing the market, but the issue isn't really about how they treat the developers(though it's a factor).
If there was an internet in their day and age, people would have been posting questions of the sort about the East India Trading Company and whom ever their competition was at the time of posting. Time changes all; though in your short amount here, it may seem like forever.
that doesnt suck ballzzz. love the tracfone plan, hate the OS. not sure if that makes sense. am I the only one one doesn't use their phone enough for a plan but wants a smart phone. I pay $100 for a year and have get more minutes the I need.
Windows Mobile 8 is going to take over the whole world, least iOS / Android.
The answer is simple, but not easy.
1. Ask your customers what they like/dislike/want;
2. Focus first on the primary features:
-The best and fastest connectivity
-Best batterylife
-Best call quality
-Best readeable screen in the sun
-Pherhaps water proof phone for use in the rain? Nokia is working on it and it would be a massive selling point
-Offline maps with offline GPS data to reduce data usage
-Best HTMLv5 browser like Tizen, with deep phone integration, and multiple tabs and desktop grade browser features
-insanely responsiveness
-Insanely great API; as insaneley good as AmigaOS back in the day
Then focus on the best components like a camera that rivals the best consumer compact camera, a fast CPU, lots of RAM and a realy fast CPU. Have a robust body and look nice with the focus on useability, not design, like the Nokia E7-00.
Make sure that you also launch the smartphone era into a real pocket computer era. This means having the option of a closed DRM appstore, but also a truely open platform and then never switch CPU architecture and never break any API. You can do this with API versioning, like Microsoft uses DLL versioning.
The rest is up to marketing and consumer feedback.
Here be signatures
That's exactly it! What compelling reason is there that people would want to switch from Android or iOS - the established market players - to Ubuntu Mobile, Windows Phone, Blackberry OS, Tizen, MeeGo, webOS, et. al? None of these have the 'killer feature' and that's why they fail.
"Why they fail" is overstating it a bit. Of that list, Ubuntu Mobile and Tizen haven't properly launched yet. MeeGo was quite successful in sales terms until it was artificially killed off by corrporate politics. Classic BlackBerry OS was one of the dominant forces in smartphones for many years, only slipping by not staying up to date; and BB10 has only just been released, not failed yet. Windows Phone and webOS are the only two which you can really call "failed", in that they're the only two which have had a good attempt at cracking the market and not managed to gain significant traction in that time.
Strange thing, you start your post with "No, it's not what Google did with Android" and then you proceed on agreeing with me on all counts.
Yes, Google has a pile of money. Yes they can afford it, and yes they did it exactly that way. " Make everything free and spend millions on it with no returns" was the sentence I was referring to.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Be ready to spend a few millions without return of investment.
Better still, put it on kickstarter and get a bunch of gullible idiots to pay you to "develop" it while you take a holiday in the Carribean for a few years.
Oops.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Well do you see any killer feature? To be honest MeeGo, WebOS and Windows Phone aren't objectively bad, the problem is that they aren't better than those that dominate the market so naturally people just stick with what they know. Ubuntu Mobile certainly doesn't seem to be bringing anything compelling to the average consumer that would make them want to give up their Android or iOS devices.
I love your business plan: Make everything free and spend millions on it with no returns. You should set up a Kickstarter page immediately. I know you'll do well!
Isn't that exactly what Google did with Android? And now they rule the game?
It looks as if his business skills are more aligned with reality than yours.
For a company like Google a few millions is petty cash. Looking at their latest accounts, they've got almost $50 billion in cash and short term investments. Even if they flushed a billion dollars down the toilet it would only be 2% of their cash.
In a capitalist system, people who start off with a lot of money are always going to have an advantage moving into new markets.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
dont forget 15 years ago there was no google. If google can do it, anyone can do it.
Google could only do it because they had already accumulated a ton of money through advertising revenue, and so could.can afford to chuck relatively large sums of money at problems without worrying about it bankrupting them.
Google weren't a mobile phone start up company.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Make a Windows phone that runs .exe files. Done.
Microsoft did all that too, they released the dev tools well in advance, they're free, and they've run lots of contests and whatnot to try and get people to develop for it, doesn't seem to be working.
Didn't read the last part of the post did you? As I said, just about any new platform can and probably WILL fail. That's the whole point. If the developers had had to invest tons of money into those Microsoft development tools they'd have been even less successful at attracting them.
The developers of big apps that invest a lot of time are going to be out of a lot of staff hours either way, but for the small apps in these ecosystems, you want to make sure that if the platform fails (as it probably will), the developers are out of as little as possible. Paid development tools don't facilitate that goal.
Will something come along that challenges Google and Apple eventually? Absolutely. But before that one comes along we'll probably have a couple dozen failed attempts.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I don't think "killer features" are necessarily the be-all-and-end-all. I have an Android device and am by and large happy with it. I picked it at the time because it was the phone that offered everything I wanted- it has a physical keyboard (which I valued highly at the time when making my choice), Android offered easier super-user privileges than the rivals, the user experience was nice, and the price was right. When it comes time for me to replace it, I'll happily look at alternatives to Android- I don't have any emotional investment to it, and my cash investment (in terms of regularly used apps) amounts to relative pocket money.
If Ubuntu Mobile, Tizen, Sailfish, or anything else looks like a better bet, I'll go for it. It doesn't have to have a "killer app"- it just needs to have all the features I want and be competitive.
The reasons I would have for choosing Android over iOS is mostly down to the lock-down and hostility to rooting ("jailbreaking") in the latter. My main objection to Windows Phone is the unpleasant user experience. Not the presence of a "killer app" in Android which the others lack.
It's not going to happen. The problem is that there just aren't enough good mobile developers and enough developer mindshare to go around. Lots of developers don't even want to support TWO platforms, let alone three or four or five. There have never been more than two successful mobile platforms at once. First we had Palm and BlackBerry. iOS came along and Palm faded away. Then Android appeared and BlackBerry declined. But I don't see any of the current contenders displacing either iOS or Android; they're just too entrenched. Any new OS would have to be dramatically better in some important way, and neither BlackBerry 10 nor Windows Phone 8 is.
What about Symbian, you ask? Lots of Symbian phones were sold, but although it was theoretically a smartphone platform its success wasn't based on its smartness. The vast majority of Symbian devices were sold as feature phones with no real app capability, and the ones that could meaningfully use apps never got any significant number of them to choose from.
There is one possible scenario for limited success of BlackBerry 10 or Windows Phone, though the latter is not pursuing it. That would be to ignore the consumer market, which is a lost cause anyway, and double down on enterprise applications and try to become the preferred device of IT departments. The BYOD trend means it will be a challenge to turn this into sales, but it could at least get them a place in large corporations that are big on centralized IT and in security-conscious organizations. This would mean things like giving the mobile a top-class application for email, group calendar, and other enterprise uses, rolling VPN and full remote management support into the OS, including a remote desktop client, and so forth. It would also mean including enhanced security features like biometric ID into the handsets.
I am skeptical about the prospects for Mozilla Phone and Ubuntu Phone for the same reasons. It appears, however, that both of those platforms are going to make their push primarily in the third world, where the lower cost of those platforms might matter enough for one of them to gain some traction. It's not just that the software is zero-cost - so is Android - but that they're intended to offer acceptable performance on low-spec devices. The vast majority of apps for the two first-world platforms will likely never get to these platforms, though the big-name apps will.
I don't think "killer features" are necessarily the be-all-and-end-all.
They are for most people. These days people buy apps for their phones, they aren't transferrable to other platforms so changing to another platform requires a compelling (to the average user) reason...which these new platforms don't seem to have.
There's a high-feature option (iOS) and a high-ubiquity (low cost sometimes) option (Android). Copycats here won't get far no-matter how much they finance it unless they find a crack in the wall (like what Verizon's Droid campaign did for Android). For example:
- High-feature increasingly means Cloud (Maps, Siri, etc), an Apple weak point
- Carriers doing updates slowly makes for unsafe Android phones. A safer (or centrally-updatable) base may be desired in a low-cost phone. (Firefox-phone Advantage)
- The first phone onto a new technology that's somehow hard to cope with?
- - Wireless Mesh as the primary communication channel (vs Internet or carrier channels) - - Robotics (somehow)
- - Screen-less phones, or Goggle-phones
- - Native emulation (simulation?) of multiple phone OSes
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