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"People crying for a third alternative mostly didn’t do so because Android or iOS had a bad reputation, or were too limited, or gave people a bad user experienc

"People crying for a third alternative mostly didn’t do so because Android or iOS had a bad reputation, or were too limited, or gave people a bad user experience, but because they (rightfully) feared a Google monopoly." Do consumers really care about monopolies? I believe they don't and I think nowadays Android's reputation is not very good. People have a whole bunch of useless outdated android devices laying around, have some horrible experience with them and could appreciate an ungoogled/unappled linux-like distribution with more control for the user and updates.

sidlls 9y ago
> People have a whole bunch of useless outdated android devices laying around, have some horrible experience with them and could appreciate an ungoogled/unappled linux-like distribution with more control for the user and updates. I don't think this segment is very large. In fact I doubt most people care about the mechanisms of updates at all. The market of mobile is, as far as I can tell, basically a race to the bottom: consumers expect devices to be (relatively) disposable things, not worth expending too much effort worrying over. They want something that works well enough for their use that they can throw away and replace without being burdened by too much other context.
- subway 9y ago
  It isn't a large segment, but it could easily be a relatively high profit margin. Look at projects like the Pyra -- it's effectively a one-man show producing an LTE connected ARM handheld while he holds a day job running a video production company. He has next to no upstream vendor support. It's been a slow road, but he's made it to the point of mass producing most of the components, and is shipping developer devices. This dude is at a major disadvantage in absolutely every single way when it comes to access to economies of scale, access to vendor documentation, and sheer manpower, but is still managing to ship a device geeks are clamoring to buy. I can't help but think one of the big players could serve those same geeks in a much more efficient (and profitable) manner, given their resources compared with what a community project can accomplish.
s73ver 9y ago
You'd think they could, but they had Windows Phone, and that flopped. Not saying that Ubuntu Phone couldn't do better, but unless they got devices in carrier's stores, they wouldn't have a chance.
- petecox 9y ago
  I've always installed Ubuntu from an ISO, never pre-packaged on a PC. Similarly, any business model can't rely on handset sales. Apple and Samsung sell them by the millions and we're talking a few hundred here. Community ROMS such as Lineage OS supporting (per wikipedia) 165 devices suggest that there is grass-roots support for tinkering. Devise a foolproof method for device support on any handset (Halium) and solve the app gap by containerizing Android (Anbox) and the users may follow - but on their own hardware, NOT a custom device. UBports lives on by the community, for the community - in spite of Canonical abandoning the platform.
  - s73ver 9y ago
    That's fine for a tiny community, but Canonical is a business, and they need to sell devices in decent volume. That means getting them into US Carrier stores. I'm glad you guys are able to continue using, but as long as the path was to flash a custom rom, they were never going to hit mainstream.
    - petecox 9y ago
      > Canonical is a business, and they need to sell devices in decent volume I'm saying that approach was never going to work, when even an established vendor like RIM couldn't chisel out a market with their revolutionary BB10 OS.
  - scottLobster 9y ago
    That's great if you want to be OpenWRT/DD-WRT/Tomato. Not so much if you want to be Netgear (or even a tiny fraction of Netgear).
- flukus 9y ago
dajt 9y ago
He didn't say a lot of people were crying out for a 3rd way, just that some were. I'm guessing there were not many. It's the same with the GNU/linux desktop. In the overall user population only a tiny fraction of people care about "freedom" and most (including me) are happy to go with Windows or OS-X. The fraction of people who care about this stuff is vanishingly small.
ianai 9y ago
People almost definitionally do not like monopolies - whether they realize it consciously or not. A monopoly has price power. They get to decide that the market will get fewer units of the good/service than the market would otherwise demand. Now this isn't some sort of "if someone wants a phone they should get one." I'm saying there are fewer people who own a phone, full stop, than would if the market were efficient. This actually hurts both sides - the monopolist winds up selling less goods/services than they could, too. (This is also where things like product tiers come into play. Those are still inefficient.) From an efficiency stand point, monopoly power leaves everyone worse off and produces waste. The truth is, there doesn't have to be conscious effort on the monopolist's side to arrive at a monopoly. If anything, markets tend to award and create monopolies.
amiga-workbench 9y ago
Android was a bait and switch, it was touted as an open platform but most of that has been stripped away with functionality being shifted to proprietary packages.

sidlls 9y ago

> People have a whole bunch of useless outdated android devices laying around, have some horrible experience with them and could appreciate an ungoogled/unappled linux-like distribution with more control for the user and updates. I don't think this segment is very large. In fact I doubt most people care about the mechanisms of updates at all. The market of mobile is, as far as I can tell, basically a race to the bottom: consumers expect devices to be (relatively) disposable things, not worth expending too much effort worrying over. They want something that works well enough for their use that they can throw away and replace without being burdened by too much other context.

subway 9y ago
It isn't a large segment, but it could easily be a relatively high profit margin. Look at projects like the Pyra -- it's effectively a one-man show producing an LTE connected ARM handheld while he holds a day job running a video production company. He has next to no upstream vendor support. It's been a slow road, but he's made it to the point of mass producing most of the components, and is shipping developer devices. This dude is at a major disadvantage in absolutely every single way when it comes to access to economies of scale, access to vendor documentation, and sheer manpower, but is still managing to ship a device geeks are clamoring to buy. I can't help but think one of the big players could serve those same geeks in a much more efficient (and profitable) manner, given their resources compared with what a community project can accomplish.

s73ver 9y ago

You'd think they could, but they had Windows Phone, and that flopped. Not saying that Ubuntu Phone couldn't do better, but unless they got devices in carrier's stores, they wouldn't have a chance.

petecox 9y ago
I've always installed Ubuntu from an ISO, never pre-packaged on a PC. Similarly, any business model can't rely on handset sales. Apple and Samsung sell them by the millions and we're talking a few hundred here. Community ROMS such as Lineage OS supporting (per wikipedia) 165 devices suggest that there is grass-roots support for tinkering. Devise a foolproof method for device support on any handset (Halium) and solve the app gap by containerizing Android (Anbox) and the users may follow - but on their own hardware, NOT a custom device. UBports lives on by the community, for the community - in spite of Canonical abandoning the platform.
- s73ver 9y ago
  That's fine for a tiny community, but Canonical is a business, and they need to sell devices in decent volume. That means getting them into US Carrier stores. I'm glad you guys are able to continue using, but as long as the path was to flash a custom rom, they were never going to hit mainstream.
  - petecox 9y ago
    > Canonical is a business, and they need to sell devices in decent volume I'm saying that approach was never going to work, when even an established vendor like RIM couldn't chisel out a market with their revolutionary BB10 OS.
- scottLobster 9y ago
  That's great if you want to be OpenWRT/DD-WRT/Tomato. Not so much if you want to be Netgear (or even a tiny fraction of Netgear).
flukus 9y ago

dajt 9y ago

He didn't say a lot of people were crying out for a 3rd way, just that some were. I'm guessing there were not many. It's the same with the GNU/linux desktop. In the overall user population only a tiny fraction of people care about "freedom" and most (including me) are happy to go with Windows or OS-X. The fraction of people who care about this stuff is vanishingly small.

ianai 9y ago

People almost definitionally do not like monopolies - whether they realize it consciously or not. A monopoly has price power. They get to decide that the market will get fewer units of the good/service than the market would otherwise demand. Now this isn't some sort of "if someone wants a phone they should get one." I'm saying there are fewer people who own a phone, full stop, than would if the market were efficient. This actually hurts both sides - the monopolist winds up selling less goods/services than they could, too. (This is also where things like product tiers come into play. Those are still inefficient.) From an efficiency stand point, monopoly power leaves everyone worse off and produces waste. The truth is, there doesn't have to be conscious effort on the monopolist's side to arrive at a monopoly. If anything, markets tend to award and create monopolies.

amiga-workbench 9y ago

Android was a bait and switch, it was touted as an open platform but most of that has been stripped away with functionality being shifted to proprietary packages.