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Comment by josephcsible

4 years ago

The manufacturers' hands are tied. People aren't going to buy a phone that they can't run Snapchat and Netflix on.

55 comments

josephcsible

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pdonis  4 years ago

> The manufacturers' hands are tied.

By "mobile phone companies" I didn't mean mobile phone manufacturers. I meant mobile phone providers like Verizon, T-Mobile, etc. They are the ones who have wormed themselves into the role of gatekeepers for phone purchases (with government help). If phone manufacturers' hands are tied with regard to what they can put on their phones or what app stores their phones can use, they're tied by the phone providers, not by users.

  • josephcsible  4 years ago

    Even if Verizon were to back something like Tizen or Windows Phone, how would that fix the lack-of-apps problem?

Retric  4 years ago

I don’t care about running either on my phone.

I have watched YouTube instructional videos, but I can’t see the appeal of watching a movie on a tiny phone screen. As to messaging apps, SMS and email work just fine but for anyone who cares I suspect they would simply jump to whatever messaging app did work.

  • matheusmoreira  4 years ago

    > As to messaging apps, SMS and email work just fine but for anyone who cares I suspect they would simply jump to whatever messaging app did work.

    Absolutely not. Telecommunications applications have extremely strong network effects. There is no jumping ship to whatever works, people will do whatever is necessary to join the network their social circles participate in. In my country it's virtually impossible to communicate without WhatsApp. People buy phones just to run WhatsApp. I've had Signal installed for years and I've not received a single message there, not even from technologically minded friends who really should know better.

    • Retric  4 years ago

      WhatsApp only has 500m daily average users worldwide, while being installed on 2 billion phones. Do you expect it to maintain it’s #2 spot for 10 years? None of them have had a run that long.

      30 replies →

  • josephcsible  4 years ago

    > As to messaging apps, SMS and email work just fine but for anyone who cares I suspect they would simply jump to whatever messaging app did work.

    Messaging apps have a network effect. You can't just jump ship from one at will, or you get cut off from all of your friends who didn't jump along with you.

    • Retric  4 years ago

      They aren’t sticky enough on their own to avoid people just installing the next one. I think I have used 10 of the things at various points but SMS and email are still massively more popular. Remember Yahoo messenger etc?

      10 replies →