He's asking for innovation in the wrong place. The OP conveniently ignores all the other mobile OSs out there such as Windows, Firefox, Ubuntu and also people like Fairphone. It's pretty lazy to just claim we need more, when what he really wants is one more (open) <i>winner</i>.<p>I say that he's looking in the wrong place because to "democratize the mobile operating system" is to ignore a critical part of what makes mobile worthwhile. All those cloud services and apps that do useful things for you. How about we democratize the cloud instead? There should be no real reason I can't point my iOS device at my own infrastructure to co-ordinate sync, backup and sharing of all my stuff (instead of iCloud). Must I sign up for yet another third-party service/app just to provide me with an incremental feature? Why can't I just install apps into my own little cloud backend that my phone can connect to and do useful things for me? Have <i>that</i> be open for developers to target and maybe I can pay them for their work. Then it matters less what physical hardware I happen to be using. Of course, you can only access the plethora of sensors with a native app but most services I use don't need this much context. In any case, this is a concept many people are beginning to advocate for with a variety of reasons. FWIW, some of us are taking a clean-slate approach to tackle the distributed systems issues <a href="http://amirchaudhry.com/brewing-miso-to-serve-nymote/" rel="nofollow">http://amirchaudhry.com/brewing-miso-to-serve-nymote/</a>
The web is your 3rd mobile OS.<p>Sure the developing world still needs very cheap phones, and they require software close to the hardware.<p>But in the developed world phones and tables get closer to a full PC every day. They basically are tiny PCs.<p>And exactly how the web made Windows and OSX, and Linux less interesting, so it will make the mobile OSs less interesting.<p>Because even if you can't get close to the hardware, and might require user permissions to access hardware features, still a java script and HTML5 based web app can do almost anything you want on mobile hardware. History keeps repeating itself.
> "For OEMs/handset makers, choice means the ability to do more with software"<p>Please no, this would only yield to more bloatware. The move of Google is smart, moving the OS away from OEMs. [Most] manufacturers have demonstrated again and again that they cannot be trusted with software, since they only care about profit and putting more and more useless apps into the OS.<p>We might need more mobile OS, but not for this reason.
Windows Phone is not that bad.<p>Google has done a good job trying to starve WP users of their services, but I think we can all survive without Hangouts (Telegram, etc) and Google Voice (who cares anymore) at this point.
Call me biased, but Firefox OS makes the web run on 25$ smartphones, is fully open and customizable because it's the web, has the biggest "app store" of the world because it runs any web app, is totally royalty-free (just like the other Mozilla projects), and is already being shipped on lots of devices all around the globe. How's that for an open, unlocked and innovation-friendly alternative?
My biggest hope is that breaking the duopoly makes it essential that someone cracks the nut of cross-platform development - and hopefully forces the focus back onto web apps or a similar open technology.<p>Firefox saved us from an Internet Explorer world. This time round it seems that we need more than just one caped crusader.
Tizen, Firefox OS and Ubuntu are probably the candidates, but I think Tizen has a combination of things going for it:<p>1) It's not based on AOSP (unlike Firefox OS)<p>2) Supports both native and HTML5 apps (Firefox OS apps are limited to HTML5)<p>3) Backed by Samsung, still a powerful hardware player in most markets. Both Firefox OS and Ubuntu [have had/will have] a tough time getting device manufacturers to adopt their OS, but Tizen doesn't have that problem.
I think the system will eventually implode. I'm actually here after my app got arbitrarily rejected by apple and I found Paul Graham's essay on how apple treats developers. I've spent the last year of my life learning iOS, first OC, then swift. I've dedicated thousands of hours developing, promoting, and even helping aspiring iOS developers on SO. I have been a loyal customer, developer, and investor, but today I sold all of my stock and pledged to never develop for or buy apple products again. It's just not worth it. We've all heard the saying the customer is always right, but in this industry it should be the developer is always right. The current system we have harms developers. Yes google and apple have incentives to keep it closed, but they can't hold forever. Although many will argue they are dead, I think web-apps will take over as more system Apis are supported.
I'm not sure what the article is asking for exactly, we've had a third OS for quite some time.<p>We had Blackberry, iOS, and Android; now we have legitimate Windows Phone adoption, iOS, and Android; and if one of those three should die, we have FirefoxOS to fill in the gap.
That sounds like a great way to increase fragmentation. Even the current duopoly situation is, to me, an anomaly and a general waste of resources, only existing because of how powerful are the backers and interests of both mobile OSes. These are two incredibly rich players in a fight for survival, which is why the market hasn't been completely overrun by one of them.<p>I'm sorry to say that, but if you want to get more choices and freedom, the most likely course to succeed is the legal one. Once the prominent player is attacked with anti trust litigation, they'll open up whatever needed to quiet things down. That being said, Google is pretty good on openness from the first place.<p>Another mobile OS would just mean an awful experience for users, fragmentation for developers and a temptation for device makers to create crap user experience. In terms of resources, if you want to see the mobile market moving forward and not sideways, better invest precious developer efforts in content and functionality, not on more cross platform madness and reinvention of the wheel.<p>Finally, users get a better experience when things are curated. No one can argue Apple's model doesn't work. People are less concerned about what they <i>can</i> do with their phones, and more concerned about what they <i>actually</i> do with their phones, which is why quality and polish win every time over choice and openness.
Apps that I explicitly installed on my Nexus 5: Chrome-to-phone, Chromecast, Google Drive (maybe that one came installed?), a metronome, and WhatsApp.<p>What I'm getting at, is that apps <i>interfaces</i> are generally better than web pages or "web apps", but <i>everything else about them sucks</i>. They nag you constantly with updates and unsolicited request to do some action, require to think about permissions, and crash often.
Does this argument parellel Linux vs Windows vs OSX to anyone else?<p>I think the main problem is going to be getting people to develop for an alternative OS. MS had a paid developer per unique app program, which was called desparate by some. Comments here state that license to develop for the WP is a $100??? Jeez, I wonder what their growth team is thinking.<p>Developers are highly sought after, experimenting is fun, but a lot of people are looking for stable jobs either from the beginning or they want to try a start up / own their own business first. This is also a common problem with trying new programming languages, why choose a new one when established languages have large user base, jobs are plentiful, and not much worry it's going to be abandoned 2 years down the line?<p>There has to be incentives to overcome these barriers to gain large spread adoption. At the end of the day a lot of it comes down to livelyhood. Will a person risk time devoting on something new? If a person starts a company on this new OS, will other developers take that risk to join? Will the clients/customers be willing to make that switch?
<i>Think about the type of deep integration that Apple-owned
Siri has on iPhones, or Google-owned Gmail has on stock
Android phones, for instance. Those apps operate much more
contextually and fluidly, and far more powerfully, on
those phones than 3rd-party apps downloaded from an app
store would.</i><p>While I understand the point about Siri, Gmail (of all the Google apps)
seems like a terrible example of the same thing on the Android side (Maps and
its incestuous relationship with Play Services might be a better fit). What does
Gmail do that Microsoft's Outlook app couldn't do if Microsoft were willing to
invest the effort? Maybe I'm missing a feature I don't use, but the best I can
come up with is being bundled with the device, but even there if Microsoft struck
a deal with, say, Verizon, I don't think there's much Google could do about it.
This is a classic network effects problem. The two OS's are dominant because they are powerful two sided networks (developers + users) and so breaking the duopoly is that much harder. As is typical with these sorts of networks you really need to solve a problem a user or developer has 10X better than the existing networks do. The few times we've seen this happen on the internet are when the new company focuses on a specific vertical (airbnb to craigslist) and/or is aided by a specific technology wave or breakthrough. I suspect the "third" "mobile" OS will succeed similarly i.e. it will either solve for a narrow use case and blow every alternative out of the water and/or be aided by some new technology. Definitely won't happen via brute force...not 8 years in at least
"For OEMs/handset makers, choice means the ability to do more with software"<p>Well, that's what Google did with Android but the makers were so bad at it (making the Android worse, not updating...) that Google had to take back control by moving more and more elements to the Play services.
1. There's no chance of a completely different mobile OS succeeding at any point in the near future. An OS needs a huge platform of partners to work, even Blackberry and Microsoft haven't succeeded. The only chance is a fork of Android that can build off their software and apps, but look how hard of a time Amazon has with that. (Though obviously a16z is hoping their company Cyanogen can succeed.)<p>2. The more OS's there are, the worse it is for companies that have to build apps for multiple systems. It would be easiest if there was just one OS, but like Communism, that doesn't work out. So a duopoly seems like the best compromise.
Duopoly? Worldwide, Android's market share has increased from under 60% in 2011 to around 85% by the end of 2013. Likewise, over the same period the iOS market share has gone from around 20% to just over 10%, while all other platforms have dwindled down to the remaining <5%.<p><a href="http://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-os-market-share.jsp" rel="nofollow">http://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-os-market-share.jsp</a><p>The only sense in which this is still a duopoly is that the iOS platform, while a relatively tiny share of the total market, is still a significant share of paid apps.
What? You haven't heard of Firefox OS? You totally should! Check out this blog post for a small sample of the amazing power of Firefox OS: <a href="http://binary-choice.blogspot.com.br/2014/08/firefox-os-is-developers-best-friend.html" rel="nofollow">http://binary-choice.blogspot.com.br/2014/08/firefox-os-is-d...</a><p>Seriously, if you want more mobile OSes, but you're not even considering Firefox OS you should probably shut up and start writing your super-powerful-mega-winner OS yourself and stop complaining.
There is a viable 3rd ecosystem out there and it is Microsoft Windows Phone.<p>However, the existence of Windows Phone has proven that developers do not want to support more than 2 mobile platforms. It creates a barrier for entry and support updates if you want to keep all of your platforms at parity.<p>As a result, the fate of any 3rd ecosystem is a slow non-growth existence in the froth of the industry platform churn.
What happened to fixing the desktop <i>monopoly</i>? Two decades with Microsoft >= 90% of the desktop. It wouldn't matter if it was Apple with 90%. One company with that much market share hurts innovation.
> We Need to Break the Mobile Duopoly<p>Yes, we all know this—maybe the OP wouldn't mind also to tell how we or whoever should break this duopoly if even Microsoft is not able to.