Android is a Threat for The Future of Mobile OSes

Android made software irrelevant. Google is giving away for free what costs millions to develop, effectively destroying the software market. Just look at the Android marketplace, thousands of ad-supported apps. Software has no value and thus no one is willing to pay for it. Very depressing for who wants to work in the software industry. No one talks about the quality of software anymore, which misses the point. Hardware is nothing without software, and Google is effectively destroying that. I won't assume malice. I won't accuse Google of intentionally trying to destroy the software industry and remove all value from software and forcing the smartphone market into a downward spiral. Google is oblivious to what they are doing. They are high on themselves. Simply, they are a bunch of morons.


Android succeeded in killing interest in mobile OS development, just as Windows did with desktop OS in the 1990s. So, in other words, the long term effect of Android's success will be sending the mobile OS world to another dark age, killing innovation and discouraging new competitors from entering the mobile OS market. Just this year, due to Android, we saw the demise of Symbian and MeeGo and even though HP won't admit it, webOS seems to be the next victim. What Android succeeded in doing is allowing lazy and non-innovative companies to enter the market and kill competition with their cheap handsets. Hardware is cheap, that is why it is always on sale, but developing an outstanding OS that takes effort. What we are witnessing right now is a repeat of the late 80s and early 90s. Major OS names fading into oblivion.

XP in the age of 8?

Next year Microsoft will be releasing Windows 8, which despite the name isn't the 8th release of Windows. Windows 8 is a great leap forward and the first true remigration of Windows since Windows NT3.1, the first release of Windows NT. Windows NT3.1 was the first release of Windows to run on Alpha and MIPS as well as x86. But one thing could still hold back Microsoft's ambitions and that's Windows XP.

Four years after Vista, two years after Windows 7 and still, Windows XP the 10 year-old Windows is used by the majority (~40%) of Windows users, more than any other OS version. This was never the case before, when XP was released a very few were using Windows 3.x or older. In the 90s Microsoft was pushing a new release every 2 years or so, and this way they got people to update often, similar to what Apple does with Mac OS X today. A rapid release cycle where running a 5 year-old release means you are 2 releases behind.

So the domination of XP is Microsoft's fault. Microsoft's inability to get the next release of Windows on time in 2004, pushing it back by 3 years to 2007, resulted not only in a huge install base of XP that can be expensive to upgrade, but also in the lack of willingness to upgrade. Microsoft also botched the launch of Vista with a confusing upgrade policy. Whether Vista was good or not isn't the point, what matters here is Microsoft failed to migrate users to the new OS and Windows 7 while better received still is at about 30% usage share.

For how much longer will we be stuck by an OS designed in the late 90s? How much innovation was wasted because a lot feel they need to tend for the about 40% who still use outdated technology? Windows XP is the Internet Explorer 6 of OSes.