Slashdot Asks: Does the World Need a Third Mobile OS?

Now that it is evident that Microsoft doesn't see any future with Windows Phone (or Windows 10 Mobile), it has become clear that there is no real, or potential competitor left to fight Android and iOS for a slice of the mobile operating system market. Mozilla tried Firefox OS, but that didn't work out either. BlackBerry's BBOS also couldn't find enough taker. Ideally, the market is more consumer friendly when there are more than one or two dominant forces. Do you think some company, or individual, should attempt to create their own mobile operating system?

Comments

Branch Tizen or Ubuntu

[randomErr]

Both are / has a mobile version of their OS. Someone should branch it and get it working on commodity hardware. We need truly open source devices. Its ridiculous that Android phone I bought a year ago will never get a security update. Or that I have to basically pay for a security update from Apple.

Re:Branch Tizen or Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

Its ridiculous that Android phone I bought a year ago will never get a security update. Or that I have to basically pay for a security update from Apple.

Not sure what you mean by paying for a security update. If you bought an iPhone a year ago you'll certainly get updates. You don't even have to beg your carrier.

Eventually

[aaarrrgggh]

When the two major offerings are not serving the whole market an opportunity will develop... but I don't think that time is right now. At some point, Apple will do something more dramatically stupid than removing the headphone jack, and maybe then an alternative will make sense.

In decades of developing and promoting tech

[hey!]

I have never met a customer who knows what he wants until he sees it.

So I don't think the question can be answered; the only thing we know for sure is that, at this time, not enough people want something like FireFox or BB OS to make them viable; or at least if there are enough people nobody has figured out a way to get it to the people who want it.

Re:In decades of developing and promoting tech

[JohnFen]

I have never met a customer who knows what he wants until he sees it.

I'm getting really tired of hearing that. It may be true (in fact, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't), but in the last few years it only ever seems to be uttered by developers and companies who want to foist whatever they make onto people because that's what they invested in, not because customers unknowingly want it.

Re:In decades of developing and promoting tech

[JohnFen]

"Foisting" implies just getting to the sale and moving on.

What I mean by "foisting" is when you are given the "choice" between their way or nothing, regardless of whether or not their way is actually good for you.

Also, developers who talk this way are often wrong about what people want, but in their arrogance (that is an incredibly arrogant attitude, after all), are unable to even see their error. The tech industry has gone backwards in several ways as a direct result of this.

Answer precedes the question

[raymorris]

> Microsoft tried, people preferred to choose between the OSes that are more popular. Mozilla tried Firefox OS, but that didn't work out either. BlackBerry's BBOS also couldn't find enough takers

> Do you think some company, or individual, should attempt to create their own mobile operating system?

Lots of people and companies DID try. Big companies and small.

> Ideally, the market is more consumer friendly when there are more than one or two dominant forces.

Apparently not in this instance, in which consumers are served by having a wide range of apps to choose from, on a wide range of hardware. Android offers hardware from $50 to $1,500, with millions of apps. Apparently that's what consumers want. They could have chosen Windows Mobile, or Firefox OS, or Blackberry, or several others. They prefer the well-known platforms with millions of apps and a wide choice of hardware.

There IS a third player - Samsung. Samsung's phones are "Android based" in the same way that Android is "Linux based".

Re:Answer precedes the question

[Stormwatch]

More like, Microsoft tried to hijack Nokia's rabidly loyal fanbase. As it turns out, killing the system they already used (Symbian) and the system they wanted to use (MeeGo) in favor of someone else's unproven new system was not the way to win them over.

Definitely

[mhollis]

Lots of people here will post very specific solutions that they have been following. Each will advocate this, that or the other and each is admirable in its own way. I am a longtime user of iOS but before that I had a Palm, starting with the Pilot and going through a number of devices. But I have a different focus.

We need a third, perhaps a fourth, fifth and sixth mobile operating system because it is vital. It is very important to note that Apple and Alphabet will definitely stop innovating and will reach a point of stasis if there is no alternative. Big corporations will tend to want to rest on laurels and allow the hardware people to carry the load. We saw that with Microsoft in the late 1990s and into the early 2000s under Steve Ballmer. They simply quit innovating on all fronts and assumed that Intel and the other chip makers would carry things forward. The result was Windows XP, which became the least secure thing you could run on a computer and the most fraught with irrelevance.

Were I a multimillionaire, I would look at this particular discussion and I would support upstarts with venture capital—not because I hate iOS or Android but because you need innovation. You have to have real competition and two companies trying to outdo each other are just not enough.

And here is a real-life example: Try to book a flight now that we are, essentially, down to three major airlines. These three have whittled down competition and ceded certain aspects of innovation in a manner that exactly re-creates a monopoly. Oh, they'll tell you that they're competing, but they are simply not doing it. You can bet that Alphabet and Apple will do exactly the same.

Two software companies is not enough to keep innovation fired up. We need more than three, actually.

That's the wrong question.

[dgatwood]

That's the wrong question. The right question is this:

What fundamental problem cannot be solved by trivially tweaking or skinning the existing OSes?

If you have an answer for that question, then clearly there's a need for a third OS. If the new OS is just going to be a knock-off of iOS and Android with nothing fundamentally different, then you might as well just use Android and avoid trifurcating the developer community.

YES!!!

[deKernel]

If I could find a phone that had true security in mind (where updates come quickly) and a permissions model that would allow me, the user, to actually set the what permissions an app has versus it wanting to access every damn thing on my phone, I would buy it in a heart beat.

What is missing (for the masses)?

[gatfirls]

Every time I have seen a new application, service, etc get overtaken by a competitor is because the new thing filled a hole missing by the masses. The biggest complaints I hear from mobile device users is around their carrier and/or the hardware. IOS and Android are in heavy competition and feature development is at breakneck pace, no startup could compete with that.

And the biggest barrier to entry is app development, people don't care what the OS is as long as they can snapchat and play angry birds.

Ohh and the patent system, throw that in and it really is a fools errand.

There is a third Mobile OS already

[williamyf]

Is called AOSP.

You see, Android and AOSP are different enough, that AOSP qualifies as a third OS all into itself. AOSP is a very fragmented third OS (API wise) and playing catchup with Google's Android Proper, since the only commonality (APP wise) is in some APIs that are delerict and whose advanced functionality migrated long ago to GooglePlayStore/Services APIs. Android can run most APPs that AOSP can run, but AOSP can not run some of android's APPs, due to the use of APIs and Services tied to propiertary parts of Android

But AOSP is very big in places Like South East Asia and LatAm (where the growth is baby!), also, in places where Google services and APPs are not available, or are not the most popular. Also, some big players (like Amazon in it's tablets) have embraces AOSP.

Currently, AOSP has a 26% market share (bigger than iOS'), iOS has a 18% market share and Google's Android has something like 55% of the 3223 Million Smartphones currently in active use worldwide...

If anything has a chance to suceed in the short and medium term to fight the duopoly of Android/iOS, is a broad agreement among players for a sort of universal API to challenge the GooglePlayStore/Services APIs that are present in android but not on AOSP.

This comment is brought you by a Cellular Operator Engineer, Manager and technical trainer in LatAm rocking a Blackberry Q10 with BBOS 10.3.3.

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