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Can Any Smartphone Platform Overcome the Android/iOS Duopoly?

Posted by timothy on from the rumbles-from-redmond dept.

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?"

18 of 404 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  2. I'd expect that... by mark-t · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    --
    File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    1. Re:I'd expect that... by Un+pobre+guey · · Score: 4, Funny

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

    2. Re:I'd expect that... by Farmer+Pete · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:I'd expect that... by ArhcAngel · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
  3. Lots of Money by amiga3D · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Lots of Money by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    2. Re:Lots of Money by Spectre · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      "Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
    3. Re:Lots of Money by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  4. No by SirJorgelOfBorgel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:No by Un+pobre+guey · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  5. Better question by NEDHead · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Can any smartphone platform overcome the Nokia/RIM duopoly?

    1. Re:Better question by localman57 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  6. Something we haven't seen yet. by localman57 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  7. Kinda by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
  8. Re:Does it matter ... by neiras · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  9. Analyst's opinion here by whoever57 · · Score: 4, Interesting

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

    --
    The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
  10. Re:firefox or ubuntu by exomondo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.