<story><title>Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years</title><url>https://stockapps.com/blog/android-loses-8-of-its-global-os-market-share-in-five-years/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nextos</author><text>Call me crazy, but I think there is room for a third platform.&lt;p&gt;Especially if this platform was bootstrapped in a smart way, for example with an emulation layer to be able to run applications from Android.&lt;p&gt;Or perhaps WebAssembly will make it viable to do more things from a (mobile) browser.&lt;p&gt;I really miss the N700-N9 series with Maemo and Meego. It was so elegant and simple.</text></item><item><author>lawl</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s pick your poison. The only reason I&amp;#x27;m still on android is because at least I can (still) have root there. I&amp;#x27;m saying still because of safety net. But if apple let me have root, i&amp;#x27;d probably prefer an Apple over Google.&lt;p&gt;Mobile phones and their user hostility is a cancer. I&amp;#x27;m seriously considering using a full GNU&amp;#x2F;Linux handheld for mobile things i can do in a browser, and keep an android phone for app garbage that I only turn on if I need to use a banking app or something.</text></item><item><author>lumb63</author><text>I’m not surprised. I used Android devoutly, had a Galaxy S4, then an S8 when that started showing its age. I upgraded to an iPhone 12 when AT&amp;amp;T ran the promotion to get a free one.&lt;p&gt;I wanted to keep liking Android. The amount of time I spent arguing vehemently that Android was superior made the switch hard, but several factors came into play for me:
- Extremely slow and fragmented upgrade of OS. This resulted in substantially older features and security patches.
- Privacy. iMessage’s encryption (though I stand by that it is gimmicky to only offer for iPhones, and I despise that) has a serious network effect. Apple is also far more transparent in what data they use, how they use it, etc.
- Ironically, price. At the time, the iPhone was cheaper than the equivalent Android phone.&lt;p&gt;The big downside is slower upgrades to the latest hardware features. Specifically, I am envious of the people who have 120 FPS phones, they’re beautiful. There is also a loss of customization, but truthfully I thought I’d miss it much more than I did. The fact that the iPhone “just works” is worth it to me.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sorenjan</author><text>One problem with relying on emulation is that Google has moved a lot of functionality from the open source Android layer to Google Play Services, and they obviously wont publish that on someone else&amp;#x27;s platform.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;developers.google.com&amp;#x2F;android&amp;#x2F;guides&amp;#x2F;overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;developers.google.com&amp;#x2F;android&amp;#x2F;guides&amp;#x2F;overview&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years</title><url>https://stockapps.com/blog/android-loses-8-of-its-global-os-market-share-in-five-years/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nextos</author><text>Call me crazy, but I think there is room for a third platform.&lt;p&gt;Especially if this platform was bootstrapped in a smart way, for example with an emulation layer to be able to run applications from Android.&lt;p&gt;Or perhaps WebAssembly will make it viable to do more things from a (mobile) browser.&lt;p&gt;I really miss the N700-N9 series with Maemo and Meego. It was so elegant and simple.</text></item><item><author>lawl</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s pick your poison. The only reason I&amp;#x27;m still on android is because at least I can (still) have root there. I&amp;#x27;m saying still because of safety net. But if apple let me have root, i&amp;#x27;d probably prefer an Apple over Google.&lt;p&gt;Mobile phones and their user hostility is a cancer. I&amp;#x27;m seriously considering using a full GNU&amp;#x2F;Linux handheld for mobile things i can do in a browser, and keep an android phone for app garbage that I only turn on if I need to use a banking app or something.</text></item><item><author>lumb63</author><text>I’m not surprised. I used Android devoutly, had a Galaxy S4, then an S8 when that started showing its age. I upgraded to an iPhone 12 when AT&amp;amp;T ran the promotion to get a free one.&lt;p&gt;I wanted to keep liking Android. The amount of time I spent arguing vehemently that Android was superior made the switch hard, but several factors came into play for me:
- Extremely slow and fragmented upgrade of OS. This resulted in substantially older features and security patches.
- Privacy. iMessage’s encryption (though I stand by that it is gimmicky to only offer for iPhones, and I despise that) has a serious network effect. Apple is also far more transparent in what data they use, how they use it, etc.
- Ironically, price. At the time, the iPhone was cheaper than the equivalent Android phone.&lt;p&gt;The big downside is slower upgrades to the latest hardware features. Specifically, I am envious of the people who have 120 FPS phones, they’re beautiful. There is also a loss of customization, but truthfully I thought I’d miss it much more than I did. The fact that the iPhone “just works” is worth it to me.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>goosedragons</author><text>There doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to be. Hell BB10 was basically what you describe and IIRC had a layer to let let devs submit Android apps into the Blackberry World from day one. It wasn&amp;#x27;t enough and devs couldn&amp;#x27;t even be bothered to do that. Later they partnered with Amazon and added the Amazon App Store and let users add their own Android apps. Still wasn&amp;#x27;t enough. It was a great phone OS and hands down was the best at email&amp;#x2F;messaging. Maybe a true FOSS community effort could carve out more of niche with this though.&lt;p&gt;Even Microsoft couldn&amp;#x27;t make it work with barrels of cash. Granted they did make some huge mis-steps.</text></comment>