Mobile operating systems developed by Asia’s top technology firms will at best
Mobile operating systems developed by Asia’s top technology firms will at best only chip away market share from dominant leaders Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS.
And such a scenario would only be possible if these companies, such as China’s Baidu Inc and Alibaba Group are able to court enough application developers, analysts said.
“The challenge for Baidu, Alibaba, other firms looking to deploy their own mobile operating systems is how to develop and market one with sufficient appeal to users, app developers, device makers, and other parties,” said Mark Natkin, Beijing-based technology consultant with Marbridge Consulting.
Baidu and Alibaba Group have launched mobile operating platforms named Baidu Yi and Aliyun respectively to capture a slice of the growing mobile Internet market.
Baidu is working with Dell to produce smartphones based on Yi, while Alibaba already has phones on sale running Aliyun.
China is home to more than 900 million mobile phone subscribers, the world’s largest mobile phone market, but only about 10 percent are 3G users, highlighting the growth potential.
Many analysts are skeptical that the new mobile operating systems will be able overtake Android or Apple even in the long term.
Android is expected to emerge as the top mobile operating system in China in the medium-term but the company’s high-profile fallout with Beijing last year leaves the door open for Alibaba and Baidu, analysts said.
Many of Google’s products such as YouTube, Blogger, Google Maps and Gmail are blocked or partially blocked in China following the dispute stemming from Google’s refusal to self-censor searches.