[microtonal]

The barrier to entry in the smartphone OS market is just too high for a small company to have a chance. Mozilla learned this, and now Canonical has too.

Not only for small companies. Microsoft threw billions had at it, bought a phone manufacturer, had a pretty nice phone OS, had a name in business, and was years earlier then Mozilla and Canonical. And they failed miserably.

(Of course, the whole WP7 -> WP8 transition was handled badly, but it shows that even a company with extremely deep pockets will fail to capture significant marketshare.)

[twblalock]

The thing is, Microsoft started pretty early: in 2010, when Windows Phone 7 was released, the Apple and Google app stores were not nearly as large as they are now, and a lot of people didn't own smartphones yet. I just looked up some statistics that show that less than 50% of American adults owned smartphones that year. The barrier to entry was a lot lower then, and it should have been surmountable.

I think Windows Phone failed primarily because Microsoft did not take early steps to cultivate a competitive app store, which they probably could have done back then -- these days, it would probably be impossible. They also didn't have very many desirable flagship phones, especially compared to the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy series.

Microsoft's failure was partially self-inflicted, but Mozilla and Canonical would have had no chance even if they did everything right. They don't have the scale, and they are now up against app stores with millions of apps. It doesn't matter how nice the OS is if it can't run Facebook, Snapchat, and a bunch of popular games on day one.