My bet is that the market is now ripe for another mobile platform. The problem is you don't spawn something like out of thin air, and many big names have failed in the past (amazon, intel with tizen, firefox, ubuntu, microsoft, etc..)

Still, now that mobile hardware comes close to being commoditized i think there's hope, maybe from an unexpected place (like the open source community ? one can dream..)

A 3rd platform will likely come from Huawei. They have the resources and the incentives.

I don’t think anything coming from china will replace apple and google in the west. The focus is on privacy and openness, and china companies clearly don’t qualify.

I agree, I don't think they'll gain much traction in the west. However, they'll still have access to, and be competitive in, the massive markets of China (of course), south east Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Combined that's over 3.5B+ people.

Suddenly the fog lifts. Now I understand the fascist shenanigans targeting the manufacturer of my crappy mobile phone. Trump administration does Cook's bidding just as it does Zuck's...

I don’t think Apple has been at all happy with escalating tensions with China.

Because users like Apple's policies.

Most us of don't want a recreation of the web where companies try to "optimize" the subscription cancellation experience. Or to have multiple app stores each with exclusive apps being sold at a premium and having to manage payments separately.

Apple's rules do have a lot of real benefits for users and so you have to weigh that up against the interests of developers.

Trying to compete with the most highly valued company in history and with the company that owns one of the most ubiquitous aspects of people's lives (Google the search engine), what could go wrong?

As funny as it sounds I think Tesla has enough brand recognition and tech chops to pull something like this off.

I also had the hope musk would launch into that market and directly confront apple and google. But even for him, that would be a very very wild bet.

Because the real market for these systems are users. Users don't care about any of this.

To an extent, users care. Android users use Android because either it's cheaper, it allows side loading or front loading apps the apple bans, or for reasons unrelated to the software experience (tv commercial, carrier forced, etc)

It's hard, look at microsoft/windows phone.