It's hard to see how yet another mobile OS will make traction. Perhaps the Android runtime will make it compatible enough that developer-types will use it.
Android is not perfect and was not always a popular thing and there is room for more than one mobile platform.
It is good to see another opensource OS step into the arena.
There is certainly things wrong with Android and iOS and I'm not saying that a new popular mobile OS is not possible but there are certainly a lot more challenges that need to be over come then even a couple years ago. I am pretty sure that Android and iOS v1 would not have been overly successful if they had been released into the mobile OS landscape that currently exists.
I think the Ubuntu phone will run regular Ubuntu apps and the Firefox OS treats web apps as first class citizens. Those two are leveraging pre-existing applications.
Aside from that, the only apps I use on my phone are the browser, google maps, and google voice. Who's to say the massive 3rd party application pool is even needed for an OS to really be successful? What if Sailfish just had very few really well-written and privacy-respecting apps that they sold for like $20?
Is this possible? of course, if its better it will win out. But this is definitely a hurdle that needs to be over come. Convincing people that they way they are use to is worse then an alternative is often a difficult task, especially for a device that pretty much never leaves someone's side. I even notice that people often have a lot of difficulty switching between Android and iOS if they have used one for a significant period of time, and most of the differences between these two platforms are fairly minimal.
Among the would-be competitors, the Jolla team is best equipped to mount a challenge.
I'm not surprised. Mobile OSs are faced with an enormous challenge, which is hardware support.
The PC platform (while there are variances) is relatively uniform environment compared to the current crop of SoCs (system on chip) used by phones and tablets. There is hardly any standardization on things like power management, security, and other on-chip peripherals.
Each port for an OS is a lot of effort, so only the most popular OSs (sometimes only one of them) is supported by the manufacturer of the SoC.
Tizen came from the Meego proper project, which was more Moblin than Maemo.
This is what happens when you let marketing... do anything.