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

Maybe...

[Anonymous Coward]

...if giant asteroids hit Mountain View, South Korea, and Cupertino at the exact same moment.

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...

[Un pobre guey]

I know the answer: No. Unfortunately, I'm still not 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.

Re:I'd expect that...

[postbigbang]

I take encouragement that iOS is a combo of Windows CE and older Blackberry functionality that was done well. Schmidt was on Apple's board when they were conceiving iOS, and he took what he discovered and grafted it onto Android. These have all been incremental repackaging of stuff. BB/RIM has a weak engineering team, but good ideas, hobbled by not making vast ecosystems out of content, apps (especially games), and so forth. They focused on business. In a way, that much hasn't changed, but they're trying to break open the cartels behind iTunes and G+Stuff.

Someone will come along and one-up the one-uppers. It's only a matter of time. Whether it's a Boot2Gecko/Mozilla, Ubuntu in the flesh, Chinese hack of Android, it'll be something. Windows 8 faces a lot of animosity, so it's a "dark horse" in my mind.

All this will pass. Everyone will try to get you to buy new hardware, change your sub & carrier, do subscription models, and so forth. New combos will be found. Maybe BB will survive and flourish. The OP seems like he/she's asking a baited question.

Re:I'd expect that...

[LDAPMAN]

Now to get recursive... What "Control, Monitoring, and Provisioning" does Blackberry have that the iOS and Android do not? The answer: none that anyone cares about. If anyone did care it would rapidly be available either from Apple/Google/Samsung or the hundreds of third party device management providers.

Re:I'd expect that...

[Lazere]

They have BES. I do believe you need to pay more attention.

Re:I'd expect that...

[ArhcAngel]

Android and IOS just don't have really good tools to integrate with business.

I'm curious what you feel they are missing.

REALLY GOOD TOOLS TO INTEGRATE WITH BUSINESS

Everything you mention except remote wipe are for the end user. When people talk about tools to integrate with business they are usually referring to enterprise infrastructure integration tools. The problem is...The end user usually outnumbers the enterprise admin 200 to 1 so you have 200 people all going "It does what I need it to do" and 1 guy desperately trying to get anybody to listen to him about the inadequacies of the overall system. For enterprise the phone is but one piece to a very large whole. BlackBerry designed an enterprise system whereas Apple and Google designed a consumer oriented ecosystem. The former allows for fine granular control from the infrastructure to be pushed outward. The latter allows the end user to get stuff from iTunes/GooglePlay. From the very first BB phone connected to a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) the infrastructure group was able to mandate policies on the device. There are third party policy tools to manage iOS devices in the enterprise but they are not as mature or feature rich as BES. Of course the new BES 10 actually has built in support for iOS/Android devices now which could aid in enterprise adoption of these platforms but BlackBerry will be making money off of each device with a seat license. But BB 10 upgrades can use existing licenses. BlackBerry wins either way.

Re:I'd expect that...

[geoskd]

REALLY GOOD TOOLS TO INTEGRATE WITH BUSINESS Everything you mention except remote wipe are for the end user. When people talk about tools to integrate with business they are usually referring to enterprise infrastructure integration tools. The problem is...The end user usually outnumbers the enterprise admin 200 to 1 so you have 200 people all going "It does what I need it to do" and 1 guy desperately trying to get anybody to listen to him about the inadequacies of the overall system. For enterprise the phone is but one piece to a very large whole. BlackBerry designed an enterprise system whereas Apple and Google designed a consumer oriented ecosystem. The former allows for fine granular control from the infrastructure to be pushed outward. The latter allows the end user to get stuff from iTunes/GooglePlay. From the very first BB phone connected to a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) the infrastructure group was able to mandate policies on the device. There are third party policy tools to manage iOS devices in the enterprise but they are not as mature or feature rich as BES. Of course the new BES 10 actually has built in support for iOS/Android devices now which could aid in enterprise adoption of these platforms but BlackBerry will be making money off of each device with a seat license. But BB 10 upgrades can use existing licenses. BlackBerry wins either way.

Your post inadvertently exposes the entire reason that RIM is loosing, and will continue to burn.

The whole point is that phones used to be a corporate provided necessity, that the end user had mostly no use for outside of work. That meant that the company could have sole control and there would be no issue. Today, that situation is reversed, The smartphone is mostly for the end users use, and the company gets to tag along (often at no cost to the company even). The entirety of the needed technology is to prevent sensitive materials from ending up on the phone in the first place, as it cannot be considered a secure device. This is best achieved as en e-mail server administration policy. Any other solution is far more money and trouble than it is worth. Simply prevent the e-mail system from pushing attachments to smartphones devices, and you're 99.9% of the way there.

The reason this is so important is a matter of control. End users do not want to give up *any* control over their devices. The devices belong to them, and they won't tolerate the company tinkering with it in any form. We are a typical operation that makes heavy use of smartphones to keep in constant contact. The company does not pay for private phones or plans, but will provide a company cell phone to anyone who needs a phone / refuses to use their personal phone. The company phones are obnoxious enough that most people just use their own. The company happily interfaces with the private phones for e-mail and corporate messaging as easily as for the corporate phones, but the no attachments policy is enforced on the email servers. Even if someone looses a personal smartphone, there is nothing of any real value that is exposed to theft, so there is very little risk.

To implement all of that support requires only that the IT department implement attachment control policies on the email servers, and otherwise its a non-issue. Our wireless networks are already isolated from the corporate networks and considered completely untrusted, so there was never any exposure from wifi access in the first place. Even after all of that, we have not had anyone come to us and complain that something they were trying to do with their private or corporate phone wouldn't work.

At the end of the day there isn't anything that a fancy BES system and draconian lock down provides that we don't already have, and we save a huge amount of money by not having to provide phones and plans to everyone, not to mention the cost of supporting BES and / or whatever other systems your way calls for. BES and its brethren is a solution to a problem that no longer really exists. RIM is doomed because they came late to the smartphone party with features that no one really needs anymore, and as MS is discovering, the market moves too fast to be playing catchup.

-=Geoskd

Re:I'd expect that...

[ArhcAngel]

End users do not want to give up *any* control over their devices.

Your argument is irrelevant. If you want to connect to an enterprise network you are granting permission for them to control your experience. That's why BlackBerry developed BB Balance With Balance you get 2 phones in 1. Why should they have this control? Because people in general can't be trusted to always think of the company first. Multiply that fact by a few thousand and the potential for a security breach grows exponentially. It's not that they want to destroy the company (but some actually do) but they don't always understand that what they are doing may negatively impact the company.

At the end of the day there isn't anything that a fancy BES system and draconian lock down provides that we don't already have

You just told me the only thing you use the phones for is email and messaging and you don't even allow attachments. That tells me you don't know what a BES is or does.

Re:I'd expect that...

[Barsteward]

Blackberry have "Balance". Can Andriod/iOS split work/user data and keep both secure and separate and can a remote delete of data only delete work stuff?

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

[Un pobre guey]

Microsoft will not win this time. If they continue to waste money on their phones, they will die an ignominious death. They need to move on to bigger and better things, like the massive robotic invasion that's not even ten years away.

Re:Lots of Money

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Dude, please. If Microsoft software became self-aware, it would be Terri Schiavo.

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

[msauve]

They could call it the ZunePhone.

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.

Re:Lots of Money

[Lazere]

It's about history. Microsoft was in the smartphone market long before Apple and Google. People bought Windows CE phones sparingly (because it sucked). Apple brought the iPhone to market and suddenly smartphones were important. Eventually Microsoft came out with WP7, and... it sucked too. I actually know a few people who returned their WP7/WP7.5 phones to the carrier for an Android because you just can't do shit with them. Windows 8 is almost worse. I think their history (beginning with Windows CE) demonstrates pretty clearly that Microsoft has no clue what's going on with the mobile market.

Re:Lots of Money

[Andy Dodd]

To be honest, Windows Mobile 6.x was decent for power users. Of course, once Android hit, it quickly became overshadowed, but WM6.x did have a reasonably good core market.

The problem is, Microsoft utterly threw away the entirety of that market with WP7. They went from an OS popular with power users to one that catered to the tech inexperienced.

It seems like a great approach, except when you have a well established competitor that is targeting the EXACT same market. With a company as well established as Apple, you are going to fail if you target the exact same market segment and use the exact same development model (pay-to-play).

How did Android succeed? They targeted the casual user in a way that didn't drive away the power user... They did an excellent job of stealing pretty much the entirety of Microsoft's WM6.x user base, because WP7 had none of WM6.x's redeeming qualities. Some might say that early Android revisions targeted the power user more than the casual user - which is actually a good way to flesh out your platform initially and gain developer mindshare.

Then Google did the one thing that was critical to being able to compete with Apple - they dropped the barriers to entry into Android development as low as they could possibly go.

The end result:
Apple - High barriers to entry for developers (must have a MacOS machine, $99/year) but high reward (large userbase) - Pretty obviously a valid choice
Google - Absurdly low barriers to entry for developers (no fees for application development, development environments for all major desktop platforms) but questionable reward (low userbase initially) - Why not, what do you have to lose other than time?
Microsoft - Only slightly lower barriers to entry for developers, low userbase - Why bother?

Now that Google' userbase is much larger, Microsoft's position is even poorer.

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.

Re:No

[Un pobre guey]

Their only hope is for current Android/iOS devices to age out and become dull and boring, and then come up with something radically new. Google Glasses are a possibility, because they change the paradigm from a phone handset or a tablet to something radically different but with the same functionality of the phones plus a whole lot more. Microsoft would have to at least play catchup with Google, and I would bet a few bucks that Apple already has a few secret prototypes. If they don't, then they too are roadkill.

Re:No

[BitZtream]

While I agree with you in principle on the No to headline aspect, lets put things in perspective.

5 years ago, neither Google nor Apple sold a phone, yet between the two of them they've entirely owned the market, world wide.

If that doesn't make it clear just how silly fragile your market dominance can be I don't know what is.

Can someone do it? Yes, just have to wait until Google and Apple sit on their butt for a bit. It may not be today, or tomorrow, but it will happen.

All things come to pass.

Re:No

[SirJorgelOfBorgel]

So, what you're saying is, you agree with my first point, but to put my comment into perspective, you're going to state exactly my second point ?

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.

Re:Better question

[blueg3]

But most of those people already had phones. So a future market player can sell a foo-phone to the (large) market of people who don't own foo-phones and only own smartphones.

Re:Better question

[YodasEvilTwin]

While I agree, the problem is that smartphones are basically by definition capable of "foo". They are truly general-purpose devices now. Nobody's keeping 2 year old phones anymore it seems, so if new technologies come along they can be added simply (relatively) in the next version; see NFC, LTE, etc.

Re:Better question

[cbhacking]

What makes a smartphone a different kind of device?

  * Touchscreen? Early smartphones didn't have touchscreens, many non-smartphones do.
  * Powerful processor? Many "dumbphones" of today have vastly more powerful processors than smartphones of yesteryear. All cell phones have CPUs; the difference is just cost and battery life.
  * Graphics processor? Early smartphones lacked them, and these days it's part of the CPU (or rather, the SOC) anyhow. Minor.
  * Installable apps? Present on dumbphones for years (Java ME), they just weren't much good and were a pain to install and manage.
  * App stores? Old smartphones lacked them, and once you have the ability to run apps in general you can add a store easily.
  * Good browser and email? See the comments about apps in general. It just required a powerful enough device with the right input scheme... and the definition of "right input scheme" has changed over time and was never smartphone-specific anyhow (see "texting phones" with better keyboards than most smartphones).
  * High-res screen? Minor upgrade, really, and again this is something that "feature phones" have had for years.

The thing that changed the smartphone market wasn't the invention of a new class of device. It was the change from expensive devices that targeted techies, businesspeople, and the wealthy (WinMo, BB, and Symbian, in no particular order) to devices that targeted everyday users and became inexpensive enough to be affordable to the masses. It wasn't the app stores, or the apps themselves, or the browsers, or the YouTube players, or the email clients, or the touchscreens, or any other single class of smartphone feature. It was the combination of those, and the goal of targeting (and marketing to, very successfully) the general populace.

How do you compete with that? Target people who today wouldn't even have phones at all? This is possible, but mostly means going after increasingly small niche markets filled with people who have no money, so their parents or caregivers or whatnot must purchase for them. Provide a device that doubles as phone and PC? That may work, but tablets and even smartphones are increasingly getting there already. Provide a radically new interface (direct mental connection, VR, whatever)? OK, but you'd have to do it in a way that surpasses what can be done with a smartphone and a few months of work on the hardware... while still providing the features of a smartphone.

No, the most likely thing to upset the status quo is if the current big players get lazy and complacent. WinMo (or something descended from it) could still be rocking along with a 20%+ market share if MS had brought out an iPhone- or Android-like overhaul of the interface years ago. Hell, given that they had a platform to start from, they could be well above that. But they didn't; Microsoft, along with RIM, got blindsided by the consumer smartphone craze, and despite their head start in smartphones as a category, they were too slow to adapt to the immense change in the market. If iOS and Android ever stop working to provide everything that a user could want, and instead settle into a comfortable position of feeding their cash cow just enough to keep milking it, sooner or later somebody will release something new that offers what users really wanted but weren't getting, and will market it well, and will steal large amounts of market share before the current leaders can react. But, I'd be surprised if that happens any time soon.

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:Something we haven't seen yet.

[Grizzley9]

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.

All of those functions were, at the time, handled by individual devices or analog usually. We knew about all the things that were being done with those services, before those devices came and the devices made it better. So the question is, what possibly else could a mini computer do for you that it doesn't already do? All the sensory and location recording and communication is pretty mature now. The only possible thing I can see, mainstream, is some type of medical monitoring through sensors on the skin or swallowed pills. So unless someone can come up with some type of computer driven telepathy/brain interraction, I don't see any big jumps down the line. Though probably just my lack of imagination.

Re:Something we haven't seen yet.

[Anubis IV]

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.

Exactly. People back in 2006 were asking whether or not the then-rumored iPhone would even make a dent in the market, and it was a good question to ask (then-CEO of Palm, Ed Colligan, famously said, "We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in", back in November 2006). But as soon as the world saw it, it knew that direction was the future. Android came along shortly thereafter as an alternative in that same general vein (at least as compared to previous smartphones), and became wildly successful. Until we see what's next, we won't recognize it as being what's next, but it will likely come from a place we least expect.

That said, I wouldn't even argue that the duopoly is Android and iOS. I'd argue that it's Samsung and Apple, since that's where the profits are going. Google's purchase of Motorola is a long-term play to get into the more lucrative side of things (while also controlling more of the user experience), but it hasn't borne much fruit just yet. In the meantime, this has essentially become a competition between those two companies (with Amazon and Google joining the fight in the tablet space), rather than two platforms. As such, I do see believe there is plenty of room for other companies to edge in and take a piece of the pie.

The reasons Microsoft and BlackBerry (née RIM) are having trouble are numerous. Windows phones were clunky pieces of trash for years, and have only recently gotten better, yet they've decided to fetter them with a take on the Modern UI (née Metro UI) that is widely panned in the press. Similarly, BlackBerry devices got left behind years ago, making it extremely difficult for them to turn public perception around without spending gobs and gobs of money. And since they don't have it on hand, I don't expect them to succeed, regardless of how good BB10 is.

Interestingly, spending gobs of money is exactly the strategy Samsung chose to employ when it brought out the Galaxy line, and even though it is currently spending more money on marketing just its mobile devices than Apple, Dell, HP, Microsoft, and Coca-Cola combined are spending to advertise all of their products, it's hard to argue with the results. It's tough to turn public perception around, and it's taken billions in marketing to help Samsung emerge from merely being perceived as a member of the crowd to being the front runner in the market.

For a newcomer, I'd actually argue that it's much easier, since you can come in with a splash and don't have to combat the inertia of past impressions that people carry about your products in this space. That said, you have to capture the excitement successfully and hold onto it, which few companies are equipped to do.

Re:Something we haven't seen yet.

[Grizzley9]

why can't you people just pay for a proper free health service

I think you broke reality with that statement.

ubuntu phone

[Xicor]

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

Why just Smartphones?

[vencs]

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..

Re:Why just Smartphones?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly what I want. My smartphone should be able to easily dock into my car and transfer my maps, media, text messages (to voice), call functions, etc to the car's display and audio easily. I know there's a level of that possible now, but nothing as simple as dock and forget. I should then be able to come home, plug my phone into a dock and have my media easily available, and if i have a landline style phone, my calls should just transfer to that while docked. Same plan with an office. Stop building on the phone, but make the phone the brain of a larger operation... Lot's of these things are already doable, just no easy, universal solution. All these years after Android too, I figured someone would have picked up on this and started it up.

Re:Happened before...

[HaZardman27]

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.

Does it matter ...

[DeadDecoy]

if we are legally prohibited from unlocking our phones to make any modifications to the software or firmware?

Re:Does it matter ...

[neiras]

Does it matter if we are legally prohibited from unlocking our phones to make any modifications to the software or firmware?

You are not legally prohibited from making modifications to software or firmware.

The recent law that prohibits unlocking refers only to the unlocking process that allows you to use any SIM card you want in your phone.

You are still free to jailbreak or root your devices, install the operating system of your choice, etc. None of that has anything to do with unlocking your phone.

Re:Does it matter ...

[blueg3]

That's referring to unlocking, which is turning your carrier-specific phone into a carrier-independent phone. You're thinking of jailbreaking, which enables you to modify software you were not originally intended to modify. They're entirely separate things.

Kinda

[squiggleslash]

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.

Re:firefox or ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you'll never have it. Catering to freetards is not profitable.

Re:firefox or ubuntu

[h4rr4r]

How is a nexus phone locked down?
I have a Debian chroot is that not enough?

Re:firefox or ubuntu

[errandum]

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.

Do the math, silly ponies

[Quiet_Desperation]

Aging population + Jitterbug phone = THE FUTURE

Re:Big Cash Prizes! That's what it takes!

[joh]

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.

What? No.

Analyst's opinion here

[whoever57]

Did the submitter read this blog posting from an analyst first?

Re:Analyst's opinion here

[whoever57]

This is Tomi Ahonen. Laying into Nokia and Windows Phone is his USP.

Yes, it is Tomi Ahonen and he has been very critical of Nokia's adoption of Windows Phone, but please tell me where he is wrong. Otherwise your posting is just argumentum ad-hominem.

Just to remind you, he predicted the insignificant market share Nokia has achieved with Windows phone, while every other analyst predicted much higher sales.

Re:I think Windows has a shot....

[Charliemopps]

We have enterprise support for android and apple without any issues at all. You need new IT people.

battery life vs flexibility

[Chirs]

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.

Re:battery life vs flexibility

[tehcyder]

I can get two solid days of heavy use on my iPhone 4. If I'm not using apps, I can get 3 days out of it.

So how come no one else I know can get more than a day?

Let me guess, they're using their iPhones wrong?

Windows Phone

[DogDude]

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.

Re:firefox or ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:firefox or ubuntu

[Pieroxy]

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.

Re:Incoming ecosystem

[LDAPMAN]

Symbian was never an ecosystem. Symbian was an operating system. Being part of the Google or Apple ecosystem has an impact on users. Using Symbian was completely transparent to them.

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.

Invest in walkie-talkies

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

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.

Re:firefox or ubuntu

[exomondo]

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.

Re:firefox or ubuntu

[monkeyhybrid]

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.

Re:firefox or ubuntu

[Voyager529]

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.

Re:no guidelines

[ozmanjusri]

I responded to "No guidelines is what is damaging Android." by demonstrating that Android is not being damaged by freedom of choice. In fact Android is becoming the defacto phone/tablet OS because it DOES support "many screen sizes, compbinations of buttons etc etc".

People don't buy a phone because it has Android on it. They buy it because they like the big screen, the colour or price or style or any number of other factors. Android just enables that variety and choice more than iOS or WPx.

MS Dos/Windows gained early advantage by the same means - it could be installed on a variety of commodity hardware. MS later chose to become predatory and restrictive to enforce and protect its monopoly, but they got their start because they were more open than their competition.

Re:firefox or ubuntu

[errandum]

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.

Re:firefox or ubuntu

[exomondo]

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.