Does The World Need Another Mobile OS?

I don't care how many OS's there are. I simply refuse to have a phone that has advertising pushed out to it.

(The formatting options for comments could use some work, it won't keep paragraphs separate.) On the surface we don't. I think the value Google brings to something like this is perspective. Given the direction cell phones are taking I trust Google to do a better job of developing a software stack than Motorola. I use a Moto V3M now and it is *annoying* from a usability perspective.

With the list you provide I would eliminate any proprietary OS if I were making a handset. Why tie my future to the whims of another company? We saw where this went with the desktop.

With the other Linux-based OSes, how much of an impact would Google have if they were just another partner to an existing project? With this project Google can lay out their vision of how a cell phone should be built.

Will there be duplication of effort? Sure. Can they merge the code later? Depends on the licenses, but the chance of it is better than with any proprietary system.

-Wayne

I don't think it's necessarily a matter of needing "more" as it is a matter of needing "better". Some of the mobile operating systems you listed are quite terrible and could certainly stand to be replaced by something better. In addition to that I think this is definitely the case of offering consumers a broad variety of choices and let the market decide who is going to win.

Having developed code for several of these,
all those software environments *except*
the linux-based one are closed source.
Closed, proprietary, "put your stuff here",
"don't call us, we'll call you", no
room to innovate or even participate
in any real since. The owner controls it
but, like all top-down feudalistic ecosystems,
doesn't work. Open source allows collaboration.
Any portions that suck get rewritten.
Add your value - you don't have to
ask permission or pay off the big guy.
Android has far more potential to
affect the cellphone market than
any single gphone would..

neal

Hi Arik,

Similar to how there are so many different types of cereals to choose from, there should also be different types of mobile operating platforms to choose from. Consumers are more differentiated today than ever before and I think this trend will continue.

-Justin

Actually, with the exception of a prototype no longer available, the open source cellphone is vaporware. The software for the next version does not even have phone functionality yet. Meanwhile, a phone with Apple's proprietary software is taking the world by storm. So, obviously, being open source does not guarantee success in itself. If that is the only thing that can be said for Android, it will fail.