3 ms·

This just shows that the barrier of entry of a new phone OS is more than $0. You can pay app developers to port their apps off of play services, you can pay dev

This just shows that the barrier of entry of a new phone OS is more than $0. You can pay app developers to port their apps off of play services, you can pay developers to add support for your attestation keys. Considering how many billions of dollars Android makes for Google, there is a room for a return on investment for an alternate OS to enable investments into a new OS.

zelphirkalt 11mo ago
How much do you want to pay? Who will be paying? Big companies will probably laugh such an effort out of the room, nay, they will not even let you into the room to talk with them.
- charcircuit 11mo ago
  $10 million dollars per app. The creator of the new OS will pay. If you offer enough cash they will stop laughing.
  - bossyTeacher 11mo ago
    Where do you think the creators will get this money from? Look at existing ones, they are cash strapped as they are, paying a million to get an app over beyond their budget, let alone 10 million
    - charcircuit 11mo ago
      Investors. Trying to become a new competitor in an established industry often takes a large amount of capital. If you tried to create a business to compete in another industry, you'd also need to find investors or other forms of financing if you are cash strapped.
      - bossyTeacher 11mo ago
        Investors are not dumb. The current duopoly is entrenched and merely asking for money to create an alternative os won't give you investment. Microsoft and Nokia among others failed big time even though they had plenty of money and competing operating systems. Investors give you money if they think you will be successful and return a multiple of that investment within a reasonable timeframe. You need to solve the 3 player problem before you even ask for money: getting device manufacturers in even though you have no operating system, no devs and no users, getting devs even though you have no operating system, no devs, no users and no devices, getting users even though you have no device, no operating, no devs and no apps. You need an MVP that shows promise towards all the above if you seek money. This is like taxi on demand app business or the takeaway delivery business but with more players and with a higher minimum funds requirement. Plus the fact that unlike taxi apps or takeaway apps, choosing an operating system is a zero sum game so you are competing in the most direct way against well known and well established brands like iOs and Android who are funded by the richest companies on earth. Unlike Uber vs Lyft, where a user can install both and use both, your battlefield only has one victor. And given that other companies with more funding that you will ever see in your lifetime still failed, you have a virtually impossible task of explaining (before they even consider giving you a single cent) how you are going to be able to capture market share with your own solution to the 3 player problem. Nokia and Microsoft only understood this right at the end: to avoid losing in the mobile os market, you need an ecosystem. Miss any of the elements and it all crumbles. Read Elop's memorable Burning Ship note on the final days of Nokia.
        stOneskull 11mo ago
        do you think Valve could do it, with modified Steam Deck and SteamOS? > how you are going to be able to capture market share gaming
  - makeitdouble 11mo ago
    Have you ever tried to pay a bank to do something for you ? Trying to get some scale, you're hypothesizing about giving 10 millions to HSBC to make business with your startup, when they're throwing away 500+ millions every year just to cover their money laundering. https://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/2013/investing-news-for-jan-29-hsbcs-money-laundering-scandal-hbc-scbff-ing-cs-rbs0129.aspx https://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/2013/investing-n... And we're discussing doing this for basically every major banks.
    - charcircuit 11mo ago
      But what what I'm asking for is only a small amount of engineering time to add 1 line to their gradle and change 1 line in their app's code. This isn't a deal spanning many engineering years doing on going work and having to measure how effective things are. It's a small change plus the overhead of making a deal and getting through the beurocracy.
      - makeitdouble 11mo ago
        The issue is to have them do anything at all. I see it akin to the proverbial "not getting out of bed for less than XXXXX". You're getting out of bed every day, for free. But having someone make you do it for a specific reason will be an exponentially harder proposition. > 1 line in their app Aren't you asking them to maintain compatibility outside of Play Services and be on available on your platform ? That's a whole project, including their (or their contracting shop's) validating the whole new stack from a security and technical perspective, and a legal and business check on what that actually means to them. Perhaps we can look at it from a darker perspective: if a random guy came to the bank to ask them support for their parralel phone ecosystem, the bank would at least want to know what they're getting into and what's in it for them. Especially if they're offered 10 millions for allegedly one line of code.
        charcircuit 11mo ago
        >not getting out of bed for less than XXXXX I just made up the figure. Perhaps 10 billion dollars is more enticing. Perhaps you have to purchase the company outright and then dictate they add support. My point is that it's not impossible to get the apps people need to work on an alternate Android OS. It is a matter of funding conpatibility. You can find a niche audience of people to start out with to make a competitive OS for them. And then overtime expand that audience more and more. >Aren't you asking them to maintain compatibility Typically the complaints about banks is that they use the Play Integrity library which doesn't trust other operating systems. So the ask is to support the Android API for integrity and to trust the key of the OS provider. This would be done via a new library to make integration easier and more foolproof.
makeitdouble 11mo ago
That's akin to creating a new browser and pay site owners to support your client. You can do it for a few dozen sites but that can't be your primary strategy. We actually saw this play out twice with Microsoft's return to mobile (Windows phone) and web browsers, money is a pretty small part of it.
andrekandre 11mo ago
> You can pay app developers to port their apps off of play services, you can pay developers to add support for your attestation keys. microsoft literally tried this back in the day when android/ios was rising against windows mobile... spoiler: it didn't work an additional anecdote from my time then: they came to where i was working at the time and proposed funding a windows mobile version of our app (quite a large sum) but our supervisor finally said no, because the upkeep of now 3 apps would be too much for too few customers you cant just throw money at devs and expect much unless you have the user base (potential market) to back it up
- charcircuit 11mo ago
  I think that is pretty different than what is happening here because: 1. It doesn't require an entirely new app. You can ship the same apk on all platforms. 2. Most apps already don't have a hard dependency on play services.
  - akdev1l 11mo ago
    Amazon and BlackBerry both tried the whole “you can upload your same APK to our AppStore approach”. And well, when’s the last time you used the Amazon android AppStore?

zelphirkalt 11mo ago

How much do you want to pay? Who will be paying? Big companies will probably laugh such an effort out of the room, nay, they will not even let you into the room to talk with them.

charcircuit 11mo ago
$10 million dollars per app. The creator of the new OS will pay. If you offer enough cash they will stop laughing.
- bossyTeacher 11mo ago
  Where do you think the creators will get this money from? Look at existing ones, they are cash strapped as they are, paying a million to get an app over beyond their budget, let alone 10 million
  - charcircuit 11mo ago
    Investors. Trying to become a new competitor in an established industry often takes a large amount of capital. If you tried to create a business to compete in another industry, you'd also need to find investors or other forms of financing if you are cash strapped.
    - bossyTeacher 11mo ago
      Investors are not dumb. The current duopoly is entrenched and merely asking for money to create an alternative os won't give you investment. Microsoft and Nokia among others failed big time even though they had plenty of money and competing operating systems. Investors give you money if they think you will be successful and return a multiple of that investment within a reasonable timeframe. You need to solve the 3 player problem before you even ask for money: getting device manufacturers in even though you have no operating system, no devs and no users, getting devs even though you have no operating system, no devs, no users and no devices, getting users even though you have no device, no operating, no devs and no apps. You need an MVP that shows promise towards all the above if you seek money. This is like taxi on demand app business or the takeaway delivery business but with more players and with a higher minimum funds requirement. Plus the fact that unlike taxi apps or takeaway apps, choosing an operating system is a zero sum game so you are competing in the most direct way against well known and well established brands like iOs and Android who are funded by the richest companies on earth. Unlike Uber vs Lyft, where a user can install both and use both, your battlefield only has one victor. And given that other companies with more funding that you will ever see in your lifetime still failed, you have a virtually impossible task of explaining (before they even consider giving you a single cent) how you are going to be able to capture market share with your own solution to the 3 player problem. Nokia and Microsoft only understood this right at the end: to avoid losing in the mobile os market, you need an ecosystem. Miss any of the elements and it all crumbles. Read Elop's memorable Burning Ship note on the final days of Nokia.
      - stOneskull 11mo ago
        do you think Valve could do it, with modified Steam Deck and SteamOS? > how you are going to be able to capture market share gaming
- makeitdouble 11mo ago
  Have you ever tried to pay a bank to do something for you ? Trying to get some scale, you're hypothesizing about giving 10 millions to HSBC to make business with your startup, when they're throwing away 500+ millions every year just to cover their money laundering. https://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/2013/investing-news-for-jan-29-hsbcs-money-laundering-scandal-hbc-scbff-ing-cs-rbs0129.aspx https://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/2013/investing-n... And we're discussing doing this for basically every major banks.
  - charcircuit 11mo ago
    But what what I'm asking for is only a small amount of engineering time to add 1 line to their gradle and change 1 line in their app's code. This isn't a deal spanning many engineering years doing on going work and having to measure how effective things are. It's a small change plus the overhead of making a deal and getting through the beurocracy.
    - makeitdouble 11mo ago
      The issue is to have them do anything at all. I see it akin to the proverbial "not getting out of bed for less than XXXXX". You're getting out of bed every day, for free. But having someone make you do it for a specific reason will be an exponentially harder proposition. > 1 line in their app Aren't you asking them to maintain compatibility outside of Play Services and be on available on your platform ? That's a whole project, including their (or their contracting shop's) validating the whole new stack from a security and technical perspective, and a legal and business check on what that actually means to them. Perhaps we can look at it from a darker perspective: if a random guy came to the bank to ask them support for their parralel phone ecosystem, the bank would at least want to know what they're getting into and what's in it for them. Especially if they're offered 10 millions for allegedly one line of code.
      - charcircuit 11mo ago
        >not getting out of bed for less than XXXXX I just made up the figure. Perhaps 10 billion dollars is more enticing. Perhaps you have to purchase the company outright and then dictate they add support. My point is that it's not impossible to get the apps people need to work on an alternate Android OS. It is a matter of funding conpatibility. You can find a niche audience of people to start out with to make a competitive OS for them. And then overtime expand that audience more and more. >Aren't you asking them to maintain compatibility Typically the complaints about banks is that they use the Play Integrity library which doesn't trust other operating systems. So the ask is to support the Android API for integrity and to trust the key of the OS provider. This would be done via a new library to make integration easier and more foolproof.

makeitdouble 11mo ago

That's akin to creating a new browser and pay site owners to support your client. You can do it for a few dozen sites but that can't be your primary strategy. We actually saw this play out twice with Microsoft's return to mobile (Windows phone) and web browsers, money is a pretty small part of it.

andrekandre 11mo ago

> You can pay app developers to port their apps off of play services, you can pay developers to add support for your attestation keys. microsoft literally tried this back in the day when android/ios was rising against windows mobile... spoiler: it didn't work an additional anecdote from my time then: they came to where i was working at the time and proposed funding a windows mobile version of our app (quite a large sum) but our supervisor finally said no, because the upkeep of now 3 apps would be too much for too few customers you cant just throw money at devs and expect much unless you have the user base (potential market) to back it up

charcircuit 11mo ago
I think that is pretty different than what is happening here because: 1. It doesn't require an entirely new app. You can ship the same apk on all platforms. 2. Most apps already don't have a hard dependency on play services.
- akdev1l 11mo ago
  Amazon and BlackBerry both tried the whole “you can upload your same APK to our AppStore approach”. And well, when’s the last time you used the Amazon android AppStore?