Biz & IT —

Battle for mobile OS dominance: Ars OpenForum talks competition

Who will be the alpha in the ecosystem of mobile operating systems?

Can there be an alpha in the mobile OS ecosystem? If so, who?
Can there be an alpha in the mobile OS ecosystem? If so, who?

In the course of just two weeks, Microsoft and Google have each announced their own tablet computers, pitting themselves against the dominance of the iPad in the tablet marketplace. Microsoft has introduced the Surface, and Google the Nexus 7; how will these new tactics impact the success of the iPad? Ars Technica liveblogged both of these events, bringing you shot-by-shot action of specs and features. Yesterday also marked the 5-year anniversary of the iPhone, and we wrote about what a game-changing impact it has had on computing. We even brought together Ars Editors to talk about the current state of tablet computing.

Back in 2008, uatu started a thread in the Ars OpenForum titled "Will *any* mobile OS emerge dominant by 2015?," and commented, "I figured 5 to 7 years is a nice time frame for the mobile OS scene to settle and mature, and maybe for a clear winner to emerge, while not too long for the discussion to head in the direction of pure fantasy. So which one would you bet your money on to emerge victorious in 2013 - 2015?"

If you are new to this thread, it’s worth spending some time in its beginning posts, because you’ll get a kick out of how it illustrates the state of mobile OSes back in 2008. Can you imagine a time when users talked about Android by saying, "Haven't actually shown a working device outside of demos yet"? It will also make you realize how important mobile platforms have become in today’s world, for both home users and for business.

The thread continues over the course of time—a whole lot of time. At the time of the writing of this post, it is 634 pages long and contains more than 25,000 posts. At page 626, you can jump in to read about reactions to the Microsoft Surface announcement on June 18. Microsoft’s new tablet was a bold move against Apple’s dominance in the market, and OpenForum members took notice. OrangeCream writes, "The Surface tablets have gotten me excited about Windows again. If they can leverage WP8 as a Surface accessory (remote control, data sharing, synchronization, pairing), I think there's a good chance of halo going on. Best case scenario: Microsoft gets 10% market share of extended PCs (so about 60m annually), which translates to 30% tablet share, and the halo effect means they also get 20% smartphone market share. I really hope that is what occurs."

Linking the Surface to Windows Phone led to more discussion about whether consumers could expect a phone from Microsoft. Jade writes, "I'd argue that Microsoft has already started making their own phone, just a matter of changing the brand name on the device and 10 billion dollars or so changing hands."

And as Google made its announcements at the I/O conference this week, we got more details about its plans, including the Nexus 7 tablet and new platform developer kits. What role is Android currently playing in the mobile world? Maester adds, "Let's not forget that when it comes to 'range of apps' Android is already well ahead of iOS. There are whole classes of apps which aren't allowed on iOS. Widgets, live wallpapers, task automators, custom keyboards etc. I don't see any categories which are only available in iOS. It's generally just a matter of having a greater choice in a few categories, especially games where anyway most games play much better on large Android phones than dinky iPhones."

DCop also agrees with Maester’s observations about the Android OS: "Indeed. The Android platform delivers all kinds of application functionality in genres that elude iOS, not surprising given it has evolved from a media player, the iPod touch. And then to top off the superior app experiences there is superior hardware to run them on."

Since so much of current tablets' UIs and functionality is dependent on apps, it’s interesting to note that the OpenForum addressed the issue of native apps versus HTML5 apps. xcrunner529 said, "Looks like Facebook is rewriting their HTML5 Frankenstein app to use native Objective C code. That's great since currently the app is slow and unreliable. It seems like native apps still are the best (or maybe only?) way to get good performance. I wonder what this means for the current app climate."

Fitten adds later on, "Your point is moot. HTML5 doesn't even perform well enough on mobile devices so using it even down to parity with HTML5 is still, evidently, a non-starter. It'd have to be near or better to native to perform well enough, and as you say, nothing performs better than native."

dwell feels differently about HTML5: "What aspects of HTML5 are you referring to? The video element, for instance, performs every bit as well as native as it is natively rendering video. Canvas is hit and miss. I would not expect to be able to render a game in 60fps with it but for basic 2D drawing and animation it performs no worse than Flash on mobile."

As you will notice as you read through this gargantuan thread, there is no clear consensus yet on what will happen in the next few years as Google and Android confront Apple on the mobile market. What does dominance mean, exactly? Is it as simple as having the largest number of devices using the platform? Is it user satisfaction and user experience? Or are there factors that haven’t even entered the discussion yet? 2015 is still a few years away, and it’s worth thinking about what things might look like even further down in time. What do you think? We’d like to hear your analysis of who will become the leader of the pack in the world of mobile. Tell us your opinions on its new components by joining the discussion. Register for an account to join in the discussion.

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