Comment by sircastor
2 years ago
Lots of comments here about the duopoly of Apple and Google (and I'm of the opinion that one cannot have a monopoly of its own product)
It's telling to me that not even Microsoft was able to make this work. There may have been some other internal interests at play, but their historical strength and background was in providing a platform, and then they dropped out when it didn't last. Likewise, Palm didn't last long in the space either.
It's not clear to me if there simply is not room for 3+ operating systems in a widely distributed mobile market.
> It's not clear to me if there simply is not room for 3+ operating systems in a widely distributed mobile market.
I think there would be, if interoperability were a requirement. Microsoft and Blackberry both tried to make their own walled gardens, and maybe that's why it didn't work out. If consumers didn't feel locked in to one platform, they'd be more open to exploring other options.
Smartphones aren't the sexy new tech they once were. They're just boring old utilities now, and it makes sense IMO to start regulating them. Forcing companies to implement open standards seems like a good idea, and maybe this lawsuit is a first step in that direction if it ends with Apple being forced to fix iMessage interoperability.
Microsoft employee, but no affiliation to Windows Phone other than a happy former user. How do you believe MS tried to create a walled garden?
It's been a very long time since I've used a Windows Phone, but the way I remember it they were just doing the same thing Apple and Google did with the Microsoft Store/whatever it was called. I don't remember if they allowed side loading, but if they did I bet it required you to enable "developer mode" or something like that, just like Google. I doubt an attempt to create anything that competes with them on their own platform would've survived.
Palm and Microsoft both made incredible (for the time) smart phones. The iPhone (and to a lesser extent android phones) were just on a totally different level. While Windows CE and PalmOS phones were trying to fight off blackberry, the iPhone was a different animal all together. The later Microsoft phones trying to compete on that level made a massive mistake of trying to tie in a bad UI design (the windows 8 square tiles for days UI) to it's desktop.
It was all timing, and by the time the war was over, MS would have had to become revolutionary in a field that pretty much every new thing had already been done, so it made sense for them to throw in the towel and get back to their money maker - business apps.