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posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday November 14 2017, @10:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the if-Google-won-did-we-the-people-lose? dept.

Android is 10 years old this week. In part one of a larger story, The Register looks at the beginnings of Android, including some early competition, and a brief comparison to Microsoft.

Google was in the game, at a time when others didn't realize what the game was. Or did, and couldn't turn the ship around fast enough. Android succeeded because it was just about good enough, and its parent was prepared to cross subsidize it hugely. Android wasn't brilliant, but it was better than Bada, and uglier than WebOS. Symbian simply wasn't competitive. If you were a Samsung or Sony or HTC, then Android gave you what you needed, it gave users a better experience. Developers were happy writing for a Java OS, it was a doddle after writing for WM and Symbian.

[...] Motorola also had a significant part to play in Android's success . . . as did Verizon. Carriers like Verizon had been snubbed by Apple's carrier exclusive strategy, and Verizon was badly burned by the BlackBerry Storm. It went all in.

[...] Android is far bigger and far more invasive than a PC could ever be. Google's dominance over our personal lives is far greater than Microsoft's ever was. The clunky laptop in the corner did not track your every movement or read your emails.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 14 2017, @07:23PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 14 2017, @07:23PM (#596928)

    MS was not far behind, they scuttled their own ship by breaking backwards compatibility upon the release of WinPhone7.

    That, and Google was giving away the OS while MS insisted on license payments.

    End result was that they needed a "willing" collaborator in all this. And after having lost/alienated their Asian options, they hijacked Nokia by targeting the boardroom.

    Damn it, Symbian still held a high star outside of USA and those parts of Europe that are now not iPhone bastions (Aka UK and Scandinavia).

    And frankly iPhone was not a big deal outside of the MSM that were already deep in Apple's pocket thanks to Mac historically being their go to graphics platform. This and the link back to iTMS and iPods was what sold iPhones initially, as outside of the touch screen it had nothing that really made it a "smartphone". Feature by feature you could get more done using a cheap J2ME "featurephone" from Samsung or like.