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So we had Jolla, Ubuntu, Mozilla and even Microsoft trying to create a new major player in the mobile OSs market - all pretty much failed to do so. Is it practically impossible? Are we stuck with Android and iOS forever? This tiny selection of options worries me.
So, according to the history of past announcements, if I translate from Mozilla speak to normal English, Gecko will be abandoned in March 2017.
So we had Jolla, Ubuntu, Mozilla and even Microsoft trying to create a new major player in the mobile OSs market - all pretty much failed to do so. Is it practically impossible? Are we stuck with Android and iOS forever? This tiny selection of options worries me.
There are political avenues to explore. Just as Microsoft was hit hard by a number of anti-monopolistic EU decisions regarding Internet Explorer, Apple in particular could be the target of an action in that space. But this is the kind of thing that requires citizen action. Also, expecting the EU commission to be the only political consumer protection for multinational corporations is not ideal, there ought to be more…
Android's market share in Europe is 75%. Google's search market share is over 90%. Any action against Apple would be completely counter productive when it comes to fighting monopolies.
Also, you need to take into account that the Web is a third mobile platform for all intents and purposes, and Windows still dominates the desktop.
So the case for any anti-trust action is extremely weak.
A major shame that we are moving our technology from open playforms built to empower to walled gardens built to consume. One day maybe it will shift towards something more progressive again.
The PC world was never really "open" it just didn't have DRM like Apple and Google want to. Are into their walled gardens. The market will force a correction at some point if the value is there for an open platform.
So we had Jolla, Ubuntu, Mozilla and even Microsoft trying to create a new major player in the mobile OSs market - all pretty much failed to do so. Is it practically impossible? Are we stuck with Android and iOS forever? This tiny selection of options worries me.
So we had Jolla, Ubuntu, Mozilla and even Microsoft trying to create a new major player in the mobile OSs market - all pretty much failed to do so. Is it practically impossible? Are we stuck with Android and iOS forever? This tiny selection of options worries me.
So we had Jolla, Ubuntu, Mozilla and even Microsoft trying to create a new major player in the mobile OSs market - all pretty much failed to do so. Is it practically impossible? Are we stuck with Android and iOS forever? This tiny selection of options worries me.
I don't care if Jolla or Ubuntu don't ever make it as "major" players in the mobile OS world.
I'd be perfectly happy with GNU/Linux mobile software that's as good as the Linux desktop.
I run Linux on my desktop (and laptop), and we're 1% of desktop users. I'd be satisfied with 1% mobile market share. We don't need a billion users, all I want is a hacker-friendly platform, with a good developer community around it (which I think both GNU/Linux on the desktop, and IMO SailfishOS [Jolla] provide).
So we had Jolla, Ubuntu, Mozilla and even Microsoft trying to create a new major player in the mobile OSs market - all pretty much failed to do so. Is it practically impossible? Are we stuck with Android and iOS forever? This tiny selection of options worries me.
Also they seem to at least cater to those not caring about apps, not able to pay for iPhone and dislike for Android.
Overall Market share in Europe around 5-10% was around a few months ago, but they have money to spare, and might keep selling Windows Mobile devices just not to loose face.
You cannot sell mobile OS based on FOSS religion, normal people want the apps everyone has and convenience, while most developers care about tooling.
So whatever alternative comes, must have a very good selling point to consumers and developers currently targeting the established platforms.
So we had Jolla, Ubuntu, Mozilla and even Microsoft trying to create a new major player in the mobile OSs market - all pretty much failed to do so. Is it practically impossible? Are we stuck with Android and iOS forever? This tiny selection of options worries me.
However I do think it's something that isn't yet ready for primetime, and it's going to be more a year or more before it is.
In the meantime they are trying to iron out bugs, improve features and get more developer attention for it. Recently they've added support for React Native: https://github.com/CanonicalLtd/react-native
HN readers might like to check out the Ubuntu Developer blog: https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/
So we had Jolla, Ubuntu, Mozilla and even Microsoft trying to create a new major player in the mobile OSs market - all pretty much failed to do so. Is it practically impossible? Are we stuck with Android and iOS forever? This tiny selection of options worries me.
@Yoavm, what pisses me more is that both Apple & Google now have a yearly update of their OS and all they shamelessly showcase on stage is emoji's and notifications.
Firefox OS promised to make app creation easier through web technologies, but "not enough apps" isn't the problem with Android or iOS, quite the contrary, so for an end user, that's pretty irrelevant.