[6d65]

I was thinking not too long ago about how phones are missing an installable os with a clear business plan.

There is the potential(given an unlocked bootloader), to use webusb to allow people flash the OS from an official website.

And maybe at a later day allow install from phone to phone via a cable, as a lot of people nowadays don't have a PC.

The pricing will be tricky though, $5 per install given a large user base, plus maybe some additional features for sale.

That being said, having an OS also means having an appstore, that alone could generate enough revenue to make the OS free.

By OS I mean an Android fork or a fuchsia based OS if the license allows it.

[phh]

Yup. Considering my Android ROM can reach thousands of various phone models, from 30$ devices to 1000$ deviecs, and I can upgrade devices stuck on 3 years-old Android to latest Android versions, I believe I have a good basis to monetize it.

And so far, I haven't seen any path towards monetization.

Most people won't give you directly money, unless maybe you target very specific niches, like privacy or FLOSS (And I don't believe I can address either of those).

As you mentioned, another possibility is to get revenue through app store (or other revenue sharing sources) possibilites. There is the obvious one, Google Play Store. I simply can't bear Google's bureaucraty, and if I were to try that, I'd have died of old age.

Other actors would be much more willingly to discuss to 3rd parties, maybe Aptoide or Amazon Store would be interested? But then, you can't have Google Services, and usage would be much more limited. Also, I believe that the revenue from people out of Amazon Store is much lower than Play Store, because people have less trust towards it (but I could be wrong there).

5$ per install is imo far from enough, because it barely pays for the bandwidth to download OTAs for one year. Unless you mean 5$ per install and per OTA, but I don't like the idea of having the user pay for security upgrades. Also, it lacks an important property to replace revenue sharing, which is adaptability to users' money (if the user has a lot of money, the revenue sharing will give more money, and it's better for reach to still have a place for low income people, notably indian peoples can give you a lot of advertisement "for free" but they don't have much money)

[6d65]

You have fair points and much more experience than I have in this domain.

Yeah, $5 even at a 1M users is probably not that much, having to maintain drivers, and as you mentioned serving updates, that would require a team.

With regards to the Google apps, I think a company would be better off trying to make something of their own, or collaborate with some app makers, at least for difficult stuff like maps, camera, gallery, browser(not sure about the paid codecs)

As for the app store, I know that's a big project, but that would have to be custom and a core product of the company.

Hope you'll eventually find a way to monetize your ROM.

[phh]

For what it's worth, I indeed thought of a a direction where app store would be the major aspect of it.The idea would be this ROM would be a "safe place". With regards to app store, this would mean:

- with "all you can eat" monthly subscription that gets you all the apps included, so no whaling allowed

- and with severe policing against dark patterns

- including a "panic button" so users can report whether they got addicted to some app.

But when I tried to design that, I very quickly ended up into a rabbit hole of "how to compute which app deserves which share of the revenue". And then, how to define "dark patterns".

And here I am, still haven't actually tried anything.

[dangus]

Is there a desktop OS with a clear business plan?

Windows is collecting data and milking a declining Enterprise client base, all the early "influencer" companies use macOS. Regular consumers essentially refuse to pay for Windows even if they prefer it.

macOS isn't installable and is subsidized by hardware sales and monthly services.

That leaves you with *nix, which is free. No business plan!

In 2021 I don't think operating systems are a good business to be in! You can make more money selling subscription sleep apps or budget apps which have way less complexity.

[6d65]

Well, Microsoft became quite a big company off the OS and their business suite.

Of course it will be hard to find corporate clients for a mobile os, but may be doable.

But, you're right, aside from Microsoft and Red hat, and maybe CoreOS some time ago, people don't seem to earn money from OSes, unless I'm missing something.

[poetaster]

Automotive. Looks like combined native qt android. Which jolla knows...