

Jolla: The market wants an alternative to iOS and Android - bergie
http://gigaom.com/europe/jolla-the-market-wants-an-alternative-to-ios-and-android/

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fab13n
The _sellers_ want an alternative to iOS and Android. A possible reason why
none exists on the market--at least not with significant numbers--might be
that the buyers don't want it. More precisely, buyers don't seem to want
anything that sellers are able to produce at the price they'd be asking for
it.

I'm not sure what are the proper rules to anthropomorphize the market, but I'd
say that for the market to "want" something, you need sellers to produce
something at a price which buyers are willing to pay.

You've got a polished and tightly controlled garden with iOS, a commoditized
ecosystem in which to find commoditized phones with Android, and a base to
develop one's own walled garden _a la_ Amazon, again with Android. There's
nothing very exciting for non-Apple sellers here indeed, but that's a pretty
good situation for buyers; I can't think of a buyer problem which would be
best solved by a completely new OS.

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fab13n
ACtually, the answer lies in the article:

> why would an operator choose to work with you? > > we can integrate the
> operator’s value-added services into the device

Translated in plain english: "Operators mourn the pre-iPhone times when
hardware makers and consumers were their bitches. We'll try to sell them the
leashes to get their bitches back, because they're the only one who've got a
problem we can fix with a new OS"

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gavinlynch
Yah. The public has been -clamoring- for crappy pre-smartphone branded apps
like Verizon's V-Cast.

Can't wait to buy mine. Hope it comes with RealPlayer too!

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potatolicious
The market _has_ a credible alternative to iOS and Android, the market just
chooses not to use it, which brings to question whether or not the market
really wants an alternative to iOS and Android.

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Geee
You mean WP? It's not really an alternative, it's iOS in different clothes.
It's even more closed and walled than iOS, and most fruits in that garden are
rotten.

Only way to succeed with walled garden is to have the best fruits in there.

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ryanhuff
Your presumption of what constitutes a viable third alternative is flawed.
Most people (mass market) don't care about openness.

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Geee
They care when they are forced to use inferior products. For example, IE on WP
and Apple maps on iOS6.

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DerekL
What do maps on iOS6 have to do with the walled garden? Third-party map apps
are allowed on the App Store.

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neverm0re
I find it really sad that most of the comments here are disparaging. I, for
one, do want something that isn't Apple's walled garden or Google's personal
information hoover.

These are hardly the two best things we could come up with.

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moeffju
I am sad that WebOS didn't make it. Not only was it a credible alternative, it
was also well thought-out and _fun_ to develop for and hack on. I'm curious
what Jolla will turn out to be exactly, but I also wish someone would just go
and revive WebOS already. Someone with hardware pull. Someone like the Nokia
of old.

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dexen
Windows? Come _on_. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeeGo>

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silon3
I was looking to buy a N900, but now Nokia is dead to me.

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acomjean
OS's form natural monopolies. The more you sell, the more software is written
for the OS, the better the OS becomes.

Its why nobody has come close to displacing windows on desktop computers.

The web helps even the playing field in become a platform that works on all
devices.

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phmagic
Another alternative to iOS and Android will actually sell more iOS and Android
devices. While it's true that a small number people will switch for the
novelty of it, the two natural monopolies will actually benefit more.

Whatever the alternative is, it should target the market which iOS and Android
leaves out at first: regular dumb phones.

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nacker
But will it run on my N900?!

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bergie
Jolla is based on Mer, and Mer runs on the N900
<https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Nemo>

