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We Need to Break the Mobile Duopoly

a16z.com

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Re: We Need to Break the Mobile Duopoly

#101

Post by arikrak »

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.)

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.

Re: We Need to Break the Mobile Duopoly

#102

Post by thisIsNotMikey »

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.

Re: We Need to Break the Mobile Duopoly

#103

Post by jbigelow76 »

arikrak wrote: post #101

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.) 2. The more OS's the…

I agree with you on the first point. I think it might be worthwhile for MS to give up on WP and go all in with their own fork of Android, specifically because of how hard of a time Amazon has had. If MS joined Amazon with their own individual forks between the two of them, along with MS's services that could replace Google Play Services (Outlook for GMail, Cortana for Now, Maps for Maps, etc...) that might capture enough of the Android user base to incentivize Android devs to target all Android app stores and not focus just on Google Play. That would break the duoply not at the OS level but it would mean that Google would have to compete harder to keep Android users on their implementation rather than MS/Amazon/Cyanogen's.

Re: We Need to Break the Mobile Duopoly

#104

Post by bobajeff »

amirmc wrote: post #63
asdkl234890 wrote: post #45

The web is your 3rd mobile OS. Sure the developing world still needs very cheap phones, and they require software close to the hardware. But in the developed world phones and tables get closer to a full PC every day. They basically are tiny PCs. And exactly how the web made Windows and OSX, and Linux less interesting, so it will make the mobile OSs less interesting. Because even if you can't get close to the hardware…

That's not the way the current evidence is pointing. People do like apps and so far the pendulum doesn't seem to be swinging back to the web. See slides 11 & 30 at http://a16z.com/2014/10/28/mobile-is-eating-the-world/

What that says to me is that people love and spend most their time on mobile devices. And that they use Apps mostly to access their websites.

I don't think that means they "love" mobile apps. It's just that on mobile, web browsing is an inferior experience. Take a look at this data on the top apps: http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Data-Mine/Top-25-Mobile-App...

Personally, I'd rather use the complete websites than mobile sites or apps. I'd also like to have better choices when it comes to mobile browsers (more on this later). I'd also like to have better tab management on mobile.

Browser choice on Android seems to be Chrome, Firefox and Webviews. Firefox never ran well on my phone and for some reason or another doesn't render sites properly. Webviews based browsers also don't render sites properly and they are lacking support for some web technologies.

Chrome is the only properly working browser on my phone and it always has me logged into Google sites and resumes from my previous session. Every time I use it I feel like I'm naked in a public place. And, every site has to be a longterm commitment as there is no easy way to close multiple tabs.

TLDR:

I use apps mostly because mobile browsing still sucks. I bet I'm not alone with this.

Re: We Need to Break the Mobile Duopoly

#105

Post by jonathantm »

asdkl234890 wrote: post #45

The web is your 3rd mobile OS. Sure the developing world still needs very cheap phones, and they require software close to the hardware. But in the developed world phones and tables get closer to a full PC every day. They basically are tiny PCs. And exactly how the web made Windows and OSX, and Linux less interesting, so it will make the mobile OSs less interesting. Because even if you can't get close to the hardware…

Javascript is the new operating system... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzyoT4DziQ4#t=1043

My wife uses her iPad for one thing. The browser.

Needless to say I am very interested in the Firefox phone.

Re: We Need to Break the Mobile Duopoly

#106

Post by datashovel »

amirmc wrote: post #61

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) winner . 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…

I'm only vaguely familiar with it, but Brad Fitzpatrick has a project called Camlistore [https://camlistore.org/]. Probably worth a look. It seems he's trying to tackle exactly these kinds of problems with that project.

Re: We Need to Break the Mobile Duopoly

#107

Post by dredmorbius »

PaulHoule wrote: post #89

Huh? I thought he was talking about AT&T and Verizon.

My thought as well. And a vastly more interesting conversation to have.

My sense is that with ubiquitous WiFi and IP based protocols, I can ditch my Smartphone for most uses, and with it the massive amounts of intrusion and data surveillance it represents. A small "feature phone" (with vastly superior battery performance) for general comms, and functioning as a modem in a pinch, with a tablet that's used in a cache-and-burst mode most of the time, and with more continuous connectivity where that's available.

Mobile phone operators are well on the way to making themselves obsolete.

Re: We Need to Break the Mobile Duopoly

#108

Post by midnitewarrior »

There is a viable 3rd ecosystem out there and it is Microsoft Windows Phone.

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.

As a result, the fate of any 3rd ecosystem is a slow non-growth existence in the froth of the industry platform churn.

Re: We Need to Break the Mobile Duopoly

#109

Post by fiatjaf »

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: http://binary-choice.blogspot.com.br/2014/08/firefox-os-is-d...

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.

Re: We Need to Break the Mobile Duopoly

#110

Post by digisth »

amirmc wrote: post #75
bsbechtel wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All good points. I think it's certainly feasible in the future, but not today. There are challenges besides technical and business that need to be solved too. For instance, you have a personal cloud server you set up that runs all your apps, and you have an Instagram-like app for your photos. How do others get to view your photos? There needs to be an aggregator that runs across servers to pull all the content and pu…

Isn't that just a technical challenge? In this world view, you are your own central server and everyone else is their own. Let's take your example and run with it (bear in mind I'm ignoring some rough edges here). You share your instagram-style pics into an app on your personal server to begin with and then from there they get federated out to people who've decided to 'follow' you (or those you have allowed to). Prac…

I wonder how this type of system would get paid for. If we're all paying for our private clouds and we use this 'Distribugram', who pays for server to server transfers? Is it free to the users (handled by provider peering/transit agreements)? Do users pay? Puller or pusher? How does this impact people with many followers/followees? Do they pay more?

Thinking about this, I wonder if the economics would work given the ad-supporter/loss-leading aspects of some of these services. Still, interesting.

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