|
Working in the streaming media space, I can tell you what happens when there isn't a duopoly. It sucks. Making an app means: Android (and Android TV being more work), iOS, web, Roku, Fire TV, Tizen, Vizio, WebOS (LG), and multiple set top box vendors who all have horrible underpowered CPUs. Some companies try do to cross platform, and that sort of works, but it is janky and customer complain of the sorts of UX issues that always pop up with cross platform apps, and for any decent functionality you end up writing per-platform shims. Also some platforms (Roku) you have to write an app for anyway because the platform requires using a custom language. Other platforms (Set top boxes) are so underpowered that you can't really run anything resembling modern code on them. It sucks. It is a huge waste of engineering effort for no real gain. Most customers don't choose a smart TV based on its OS, a large % of people choose based on what is on sale at Costco, and another demographic chooses whatever they are told is "the best" by reviewers. Mobile app developers dealing with a duopoly have it easy, but even that dramatically increases barrier to entry compared to the 90s where you just had to write one app for Windows and so long as you only used documented APIs, Microsoft would move heaven and earth to make sure your app kept working between major OS updates. |