I’m sure it’s very difficult to compete with the established duopoly of Apple and Google.
How are you supposed to make a product cheap against those enormous economies of scale, all while knowing very few people will want it or buy it when it doesn’t have any apps for reasons of that same duopoly?
Linux phones absolutely are a niche project with sacrifices, as you said, and the only people who can bear the cost of entry at the moment will be a niche market of engineers and tinkerers.
It would be nice to get the price down to that of the consumer market, but the whole experience is still not even ready for consumers.
On PC, most of what people want to do happens inside a web browser, which means as soon as you have a browser your alternative operating system - like Linux - is very functional already.
Of the remaining functionality, a lot of it are apps that work offline; CAD/CAM apps, video production, office and business. Any devs who are willing can build similar equivalents to these apps, and they can even make them interoperable with the big players like Microsoft Office.
Compare to phones, where 90% of what people do is apps, and those apps are not made by random people, but by the company who provides the service. Which means if you aren’t on iOS or Android then you probably can’t book a taxi, can’t access your banking app, can’t message your family on the platform they all use, can’t access your national government healthcare app, and the list goes on - you need support from service providers.
Microsoft tried to launch an alternative operating system with Windows Phone. They made a great device with an OS that was nice to use, and although they threw absolutely millions of dollars at other companies to make apps for their platform it still wasn’t enough. And this was over 10 years ago when people were far less dependant on apps than they are now.
I’m sure it’s very difficult to compete with the established duopoly of Apple and Google.
How are you supposed to make a product cheap against those enormous economies of scale, all while knowing very few people will want it or buy it when it doesn’t have any apps for reasons of that same duopoly?
Linux phones absolutely are a niche project with sacrifices, as you said, and the only people who can bear the cost of entry at the moment will be a niche market of engineers and tinkerers.
It would be nice to get the price down to that of the consumer market, but the whole experience is still not even ready for consumers.
You mean like on PCs with Mac and Windows?
No I don’t.
On PC, most of what people want to do happens inside a web browser, which means as soon as you have a browser your alternative operating system - like Linux - is very functional already.
Of the remaining functionality, a lot of it are apps that work offline; CAD/CAM apps, video production, office and business. Any devs who are willing can build similar equivalents to these apps, and they can even make them interoperable with the big players like Microsoft Office.
Compare to phones, where 90% of what people do is apps, and those apps are not made by random people, but by the company who provides the service. Which means if you aren’t on iOS or Android then you probably can’t book a taxi, can’t access your banking app, can’t message your family on the platform they all use, can’t access your national government healthcare app, and the list goes on - you need support from service providers.
Microsoft tried to launch an alternative operating system with Windows Phone. They made a great device with an OS that was nice to use, and although they threw absolutely millions of dollars at other companies to make apps for their platform it still wasn’t enough. And this was over 10 years ago when people were far less dependant on apps than they are now.