iLevon: The MiOS Question

Weibo:

Bing Translator:

Heard that Huawei has developed its own mobile phone operating system, but not anytime soon. Android phone makers, who borrowed huge ecological Android done local customization of Android is certainly better than itself to develop the system, almost disappeared from domestic manufacturers that release mobile operating system in the past. Free from certain users, hardware and software platforms, there is no experience is better than Android how can you sell? To whom? What to use? Three words: wash sleep … …

Clearer English: Past attempts to develop a mobile OS have failed and there is currently nothing better than Android. A customized Android is better than creating a new mobile OS and making people start all over again.

I guess Jolla never got that memo.

There’s been some chatter about Xiaomi developing a MiOS (as I’ve been expecting). Unfortunately, the source material is so mangled in translation that it’s difficult to pull any sense out of it. Anyone who can read Chinese is welcome to tell us the gist in Comments [Google Translate].

I think iLevon is being coy. It’s entirely possible for Xiaomi to do a MiOS, completely independent of Android. They have a large customer base that would probably jump at the chance to further distance themselves from others with an OS all their own. But then there are at least two problems:

1) Convincing developers to create for it.

1) Expanding beyond that customer base.

Microsoft continues to get a bruising with Windows Phone despite its huge investment.

What I think is always forgotten is the lesson Apple has provided. Their Mac OS developer population shrank drastically over the years. Apple filled many of the “app gaps” by creating their own — the iLife and iWork suites. Xiaomi could do the same with a MiOS.

And there’s the lesson Palm provided too. Despite having built-in apps, they shared the source code and allowed developers to make money by customizing those apps beyond the basic features provided by Palm.

This is not an entirely insurmountable problem (despite Microsoft, which I think provides its own kind of Microsoft-like lesson in hubris) if a company is willing to plan carefully and create its own apps. People tend to forget that apps arefunctions. If people are given the functions they need built-in, that’s a huge incentive to buy a phone with a new OS and they’ll be able to wait for developers to catch on and provide advanced apps.