Comment by rich_sasha

It's funny. It just struck me that the EU is uniquely well positioned to develop an alternative to Android and iOS.

Start with one of the open source projects - I guess an Android derivative, sans all the Google stuff. Give them funding, maybe regulate (that always helps).

Then mandate that within X years, various key apps must provide for this system - things like bank apps, state admin apps etc. In high likelihood, development would be close enough to Android that it would not be a crazy high burden - and anyway, it seems most people use cross platform frameworks.

EU could regulate, or influence via ownership, privacy controls better tailored to European tastes.

That would give the EU a dose of digital sovereignty without doing much, and ensuring some degree of usability.

It's a shame that instead GrapheneOS seems to get sued.