Breaking The Android-iOS Duopoly: Will Android And iOS Ever Get A Serious Third Competitor?

The current smartphone market is dominated by Google ’s Android and Apple ’s iOS with Microsoft ’s WP a distant third.

According to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, the worldwide smartphone market grew 13.0% year over year in 2015 Q2 with 341.5 million shipped devices. Android dominated the market with an 82.8% share in 2015 Q2. Growth was primarily reached in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan), the Middle East and Africa. China joined North America and Western Europe with a more moderate growth rate.

The 2015 numbers show that consumers are buying smartphones at a slower pace, pushing the growth rate down to 9.8%. The main contributing factor is the slowdown of the Chinese economy. Furthermore, China is maturing from a first-time buy to a replacement market.

The main growth in smartphones will be realized in emerging markets with low-cost smartphones. An example is the rising popularity of Windows Phone in Brazil, where it is now more popular than Apple's iOS. When smartphone sales started to drop, the high-end sector (where iPhones dominate) was hit the hardest.

Room for more

Currently, Android, iOS, and Windows are the top three smartphone platforms. The main question is if this will remain so during the coming years. When we look back, there were at least three more viable smartphone platforms that did not make it: BlackBerry, Palm OS, and Symbian.

Windows Phone

Although being a (distant) third, Windows Phone never came close to the popularity of iOS and Android. There are several reasons for this, starting with Microsoft only entering the market in 2010. Furthermore, while Apple and Google focused on mobile, Microsoft stuck to its Windows and Office monopolies and failed to make mobile a main priority.

Windows Phone sales have never been strong enough to threaten iPhones and Android sales. When Microsoft launched the Windows Phone 8 and Nokia 920, Apple (with its 4, 4S, 5 and 5S) and Android (with the Samsung Galaxy series) already dominated the market with hundreds of millions devices. Their app stores feature a plethora of well designed, native and updated applications, supported by dedicated developers. At the same time, developers of Windows Phone apps are losing interest; some of them are even dropping support altogether.

Microsoft also made the strategic decision to focus on selling low-end Lumia devices to offer a cheaper alternative. Although Lumia sales did increase, the overall market share decreased due the dominance of Android and iOS. Consumers are unwilling to purchase budget smartphones (such as the Lumia 535) when they have a contract with their carrier that allows them to get a high-end device for the same money.

By producing Lumia in-house ( Nokia ), Microsoft also alienated 3rd party (OEM) support from manufacturers such as Samsung and Huawei.

There is some indication that Microsoft is looking for other ways to remain relevant; the company already made many of its tools and services (Office, OneDrive and Skype) available to Android and iOS users.

BlackBerry

Another contender is BlackBerry OS, currently taking fourth place in smartphone market. However, BlackBerry 10 OS devices failed to attract consumers. In 2015, BlackBerry released Priv, a smartphone that runs on Android. During Q4 2015, Blackberry sold only 600,000 phones including Priv devices. To boost sales, BlackBerry made Priv available in India, Spain, Italy, South Africa, Australia, Japan, Nigeria, Israel, France and Mexico. In April 2016, BlackBerry announced that it aims to release two mid-range Android-based handsets: “Rome”, a premium model, and “Hamburg”, a mid-range device that will rely on a touchscreen rather than a hardware keyboard.

YunOS

Flying under the radar is Alibaba ’s YunOS which was launched in July 2011. Alibaba wants to increase its YunOS domestic market share to 20-25 percent, replacing Apple ’s iOS as the second biggest operating system in China. Recent data from Kantar Worldpanel showed that Android’s market share in China increased to 76.4 percent in February 2016, while Apple ’s iOS slipped to 22.2 percent. Several domestic smartphone brands, including Meizu and Duowei, are already running on YunOS. On a global scale, Alibaba wants YunOS to become the third biggest player in the world running on 40 million devices.

Tizen OS

Although Samsung has been using Google's Android OS to run its range of Galaxy smartphones and tablets, it recently launched its Z1, a device running on its own operating system Tizen OS. The $92 low-end, functional smartphone debuted in India, the second-most populated country in the world with a high demand for smartphones.  Like Android, Tizen is an open source, HTML5-based operating system. It supports native and web apps and offers a unified experience across multiple devices.

Sailfish OS

Finnish mobile OS maker Jolla’s Sailfish platform tries to be an alternative to Android and iOS. At MWC 2016, Jolla announced that Indian device manufacturer Intex Technologies will launch its Aqua Fish smartphone running on Sailfish OS operating system by the end of April 2016. The device promises premium, locally relevant, content that is integrated directly into the smartphone's user interface. According to Jolla, it also has deals in place with Mauritius-based mi-Fone (the first African mobile devices brand), Dutch startup Fairphone (developer of smartphones that are designed and produced with minimal harm to people and the planet), and Turing phone (an ultra-secure Android smartphone partially made from liquid metal).

Ubuntu OS

UK-based Canonical’s Ubuntu is a Debian-based Linux operating system for personal computers, smartphones and network servers. AT &T announced at the beginning of 2016 that it plans to use the open source Ubuntu OS for its networking, cloud and enterprise applications.

Firefox OS

Mozilla launched Firefox OS in 2013 for democratizing the smartphone market. The open source, HTML5-based operating system wanted to break the Google - Apple duopoly. The low-cost Firefox OS handsets did sell in developing countries due to its low price point, but were never as popular as the low-end Android phones (available for under $50). At the beginning of 2016, Mozilla announced that it will no longer offer Firefox OS smartphones through carriers.

Who will be number three?

Before addressing this question, there is another issue to be considered - does the market really need a third OS?  To launch an operating system with the impact and popularity of Android and iOS, it would entail that app developers must create apps that not only run on Android and iOS, but also on the third OS. This is not only a major pain for them, but might also not be that profitable. Developers are not willing to allocate resources to a platform that does not have a significant user base.

Furthermore, consumers do not care that there are only two alternatives in the market; they are happy for now with their current choice between Android and iPhone. They are unwilling to buy devices that do not have a slew of popular applications. For now, it’s just the carriers and other vendors that cannot wait to have an alternative OS around to reduce their reliance on Android and iOS.

Savvy entrepreneurs might have notices that the need for a third platform comes from the rise of IoT in the shape of a real-time operating system (RTOS). IoT devices require software that is scalable, connected and reliable. Although Linux seems to be an obvious choice since it is a robust and developer-friendly OS, it is not suitable as a real-time operating system due to its memory footprint. Linux cannot run on 8 or 16-bit MCUs, let alone the latest 32-bit MCUs, since they lack sufficient onboard RAM to accommodate Linux.

There are already several players in the RTOS market - the major ones are VxWorks RTOS (Wind River) and IT-RTOS (Texas Instruments). For smaller IoT devices, the open-source RIOT is popular. But entrepreneurs might wait for the OS that has the best chance of becoming the third major OS: Samsung has just released its own RTOS that could greatly benefit entrepreneurs active in the IoT market.