The irony is that if Google had not licensed Android and only manufactured its own devices, like Apple does, it could restrict consumer options much more harshly without EU fines and restrictions.
The point is, the alternative scenario involves more actors making different choices.
Firefox OS and webOS are still around under different names, which are Capyloon [1] and LuneOS respectively [2].
I wonder which of these projects is most active at this time.
If you look at Google's hardware's capabilities, Android would have flopped immediately.
As bad as the org level issues were with Windows Phone, it would have still beaten Android-on-Google-hardware-only.
I wonder without AOSP or some other major FOSS mobile operating system to shake things up, if smartphones would be more like the PDA industry in the 1990s, with proprietary OS's from OEMs competing with each other. Maybe Palm sticks around and webOS gets a long lease on life. Maybe Samsung, Intel, the Linux Foundation, and co. try to get mass adoption of Tizen, with hilarious results. Though perhaps if Nokia sticks around, MeeGo as based on the Harmattan design in the N9 gets wider use, delaying the need for a successor like Tizen. In any case, with only Apple and Microsoft as their mobile competitors and without Android devices cutting at their margins, BlackBerry still has a fighting chance.
The other possible alternative is Palm WebOS, but I think they were too Apple-like for their own good. The key differentiators that helped Android succeed as an iPhone alternative (wide device variety, more "open" platform) apply much more easily to Windows Phone.
Not to mention BlackBerry and webOS still being contenders.
Would this not simply kill the kind of integration that Apple has between its different services? Or any of the smart assistants?
I think today's ruling reflects this, as much of it has to do with how Google handles the licensing of their proprietary Android bits.
If an EU company did similar it might not be hit so hard (which would be hypocritical). But that doesn't make this action (a fine for obviously anticompetitive action) in bad faith, so much as it would make the other (lack of fine) so.
Have you any evidence, numerical or otherwise, to substantiate your assertion?
And guess what, most of those big tech abusers are American.
But if it helps with anything, it doesn't look too kindly upon Chinese companies, either.
It can't really do much about European big tech companies since there aren't that many left... and they're in enterprise markets where things work completely differently (enterprises can sue you themselves very efficiently if they're disadvantaged, thank you very much).
And this is EU, which mostly does have them as top priority.
Windows phones tried the Apple approach if I remember correctly when their phones were on the market and it wasn't enough to keep them competitive. They had a litany of other issues to boot, but taking the "walled garden" approach raised the ire of many developers.
this does not look at all even close to a monopoly from Apple.
As far as I see their power in Europe comes from the fact that competition is following them in some decisions.
Apple has lots of partners, but Foxconn and Pegatron make phones for many companies.
I think in this alternate universe, Windows Phone may have actually succeeded.