It seems like a bit off that Huawei, which, IIRC, was part of that group of companies that was complaining about Google's monopoly, doesn't have a good replacement for Google's services.
These don't seem that...opposite to me. They both fundamentally are the same complaint: there is a lack of _choice_ to be had.
Yes, they are attacking different sides of that lack of choice in different regions, but they're both fundamentally saying we should have the option, but not be required to do this thing.
Or that again but replace with Microsoft and IE6 (in its heyday) and you'll realize what that "can't improve on" actually means.
Other OSes can't compete because they lack the push to critical mass needed to build a solid app ecosystem, not because they are inherently inferior. It's a vicious circle where you need apps to get big and need to be big to get apps. If on top of that Google piles on the requirement that any manufacturer is either with or against Google, so they have to swear off any other OS in order to have access to Google services, you get some really insurmountable odds.
Those just seem...like totally different statements to me. Yes, Google has done an amazing job building a great software platform. No, despite the fact that Google is the best, they are not allowed to use that market dominance to assert undue control over the rest of the ecosystem.
I guess I just don't see anyone blaming Google for making amazing products. People were blaming Google for using the immense leverage that their near-monopoly position put them in (because they made amazing products).
I'm still shocked Microsoft couldn't get its act together and stick it out with their mobile platform. One of the main things which absolutely killed their platform was how they handled their app store. Had they managed it better by making it easier to build apps for their platform like Android has, they would've been able to stick around longer.
Shame really and makes other players hesitant to come into an industry when you have a behemoth like Microsoft fail so badly.
December 10th of this year was their sunset date for support.
In my experience, it was actually easier to develop for Windows Mobile than it was for Android, because on Android you had to update constantly just to retain the features that you had. Windows Mobile, especially for someone who's worked with UWP previously, was much easier to work with.
I too wish that Microsoft hadn't sunset it so quickly.
And some build vs compile bug for androidX kept popping up. Urgh.
Untill I removed a package that was added together with 4 others...
It did got a lot faster to emulate and hot loading is awesome as well. But MS development ( c#) is a massive pro versus Java/kotlin.
No, Google is the villain for abusing their Android monopoly, not for having one.
case in point f-droid: open source playStore alternative. go see how many confirmations and special settings you have to figure out to be able to use.
another: mozilla location services and UnifiedNlp. two full replacement for google location via wifi. google completely broke the hability to use it deliberately and for no good technical reason (it is trivial if you have root. literally just change one setting that was only added to block the existing feature of setting a new location backend provider)
re EU and Asia's different stance on this, that's exactly what monopoly is. EU is getting ahead of the game and IMO making the right move. Rest of the world needs to join, close the legal loopholes of monopoly and do something to protect user privacy.
The same can't be said for ios
There is only one 'killer app' on my phone - WhatsApp. I need my phone to access that through a PC and therefore need the app.
Years ago I had a lot more apps, nowadays I am 'meh' and never visit the Play Store. Anecdotal, but, as mentioned, PWA has arrived and that means that an app store is not strictly needed like how it was before HTML5 arrived.