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It is really hard to beat apple and Google due to their app stores. Windows phone wasn't bad but it lost the market badly because of lack of apps. Any new phone

It is really hard to beat apple and Google due to their app stores. Windows phone wasn't bad but it lost the market badly because of lack of apps. Any new phone OS is going to lack the apps which people are used to and won't sell. Devs won't make apps for a platform until it has users. It's a classic chicken and egg problem which is very hard to solve.

jarjoura 7y ago
I'd argue that Windows Phone was poorly executed on Microsoft's part due to redoing the OS 3 times in its short lifecycle. Every redoing forced developers to rewrite their apps in the new platform. Then Microsoft couldn't get cell phone makers to commit to updates leaving a splattering of versions that supported only subsets of features all over the place. Initially the phone had a following and if Microsoft built that following up, developers would have jumped on board.
tsycho 7y ago
This is the killer moat. It's hard enough to build a competent app for 2 app stores and make any money, that developers have no time/energy to build for a third one. Microsoft screwed up badly while they still had the chance by changing paradigms rapidly. They (correctly) tried to pay developers to build apps for them, since you don't really need a million apps, you just need the top 30 to work. The problem was that Google owns many of these top 30 and they weren't interested in helping Microsoft obviously. You can't have a winning mobile platform without YouTube, Maps, and for many, Photos/Gmail/Translate.
nicolaslem 7y ago
Except a handful of them, most of the apps in the Play store are barely more than spyware disguised as applications. I can see not having them as a feature. On the other hand the Librem 5 can apparently install the 60000 packages Debian supports, all of them respecting the user out of the box.
deltron3030 7y ago
It's dumb to target the same market, everybody. This ship has sailed. It doesn't mean that there isn't subset of a market for privacy/security enthusiasts (purism), or for productivity people and digital minimalists who could do with one app like Notion and maybe email.
- three_seagrass 7y ago
  Even those niche markets are still too small to hit the economies of scale necessary for per unit costs to be remotely affordable. These variable costs are magnitudes higher than just launching some privacy-first service like protonmail.
JohnFen 7y ago
On the other hand, I'm encountering more and more normal people who refuse to install any additional apps on their phones at all because they don't trust any of them. If that becomes a more common attitude, then there isn't any inherent advantage to having a large app store.
fsflover 7y ago
I would argue that it is not that hard to compete with those app stores if you find something important they lack (e.g. freedom/reliability). F-Droid is very popular considering it is not preinstalled.
GuB-42 7y ago
That's where privacy comes in. That's one area where Google cannot compete, due to its business model. Apple is already capitalizing on that, but the high prices and closed ecosystem can be a turn off, and Apple will never let go of that. Privacy is an wonderful opportunity. Your system can be worse in pretty much every aspect, but simply by blocking stuff and even better, not doing things, you turn that into an advantage. It may stay a niche thing, but there is a market left open by the tech giants.
idrios 7y ago
I would argue that Windows phone lost the market because it joined late and didn't add anything of value that was not already available through Android or iPhone. But a privacy-focused smartphone already has unique value to me. That said, my own skepticism with this article comes from the fact that from reading this, I didn't take away anything about their privacy stance except "We don't share your data with Google or Apple" so I can't tell if they're actually pro-privacy or just anti-Google/Apple

jarjoura 7y ago

I'd argue that Windows Phone was poorly executed on Microsoft's part due to redoing the OS 3 times in its short lifecycle. Every redoing forced developers to rewrite their apps in the new platform. Then Microsoft couldn't get cell phone makers to commit to updates leaving a splattering of versions that supported only subsets of features all over the place. Initially the phone had a following and if Microsoft built that following up, developers would have jumped on board.

tsycho 7y ago

This is the killer moat. It's hard enough to build a competent app for 2 app stores and make any money, that developers have no time/energy to build for a third one. Microsoft screwed up badly while they still had the chance by changing paradigms rapidly. They (correctly) tried to pay developers to build apps for them, since you don't really need a million apps, you just need the top 30 to work. The problem was that Google owns many of these top 30 and they weren't interested in helping Microsoft obviously. You can't have a winning mobile platform without YouTube, Maps, and for many, Photos/Gmail/Translate.

nicolaslem 7y ago

Except a handful of them, most of the apps in the Play store are barely more than spyware disguised as applications. I can see not having them as a feature. On the other hand the Librem 5 can apparently install the 60000 packages Debian supports, all of them respecting the user out of the box.

deltron3030 7y ago

It's dumb to target the same market, everybody. This ship has sailed. It doesn't mean that there isn't subset of a market for privacy/security enthusiasts (purism), or for productivity people and digital minimalists who could do with one app like Notion and maybe email.

three_seagrass 7y ago
Even those niche markets are still too small to hit the economies of scale necessary for per unit costs to be remotely affordable. These variable costs are magnitudes higher than just launching some privacy-first service like protonmail.

JohnFen 7y ago

On the other hand, I'm encountering more and more normal people who refuse to install any additional apps on their phones at all because they don't trust any of them. If that becomes a more common attitude, then there isn't any inherent advantage to having a large app store.

fsflover 7y ago

I would argue that it is not that hard to compete with those app stores if you find something important they lack (e.g. freedom/reliability). F-Droid is very popular considering it is not preinstalled.

GuB-42 7y ago

That's where privacy comes in. That's one area where Google cannot compete, due to its business model. Apple is already capitalizing on that, but the high prices and closed ecosystem can be a turn off, and Apple will never let go of that. Privacy is an wonderful opportunity. Your system can be worse in pretty much every aspect, but simply by blocking stuff and even better, not doing things, you turn that into an advantage. It may stay a niche thing, but there is a market left open by the tech giants.

idrios 7y ago

I would argue that Windows phone lost the market because it joined late and didn't add anything of value that was not already available through Android or iPhone. But a privacy-focused smartphone already has unique value to me. That said, my own skepticism with this article comes from the fact that from reading this, I didn't take away anything about their privacy stance except "We don't share your data with Google or Apple" so I can't tell if they're actually pro-privacy or just anti-Google/Apple