> Sure, competitors could have started in 2009, too bad it's 2024 though now.
You may be missing the point, which is that today's Apple and Google are as "permanently" entrenched as Nokia, Blackberry, and Palm were back in the day. That is to say, not at all.
> Yes, that's why we need open standards to lower the barrier of competition.
Many open-source alternatives to iOS and Android have tried and failed to compete. For better or worse, this doesn't appear to matter to mainstream buyers.
You're going in circles, we don't need to speculate, we know that no competitor can emerge because they don't despite a huge revenue potential in this sector.
The proof is in the pudding as I said anyways, I'll believe there's competition in the mobile space when I'll see it. For now it all looks like it's impossible due to blockers like the apps and others.
And yeah maybe smartphones will become obsolete but I'm not going to count on it.
Sure, competitors could have started in 2009, too bad it's 2024 though now.
Anyway, the proof is in the pudding, there's no competitor in the past 10 years despite a big revenue potential, that's the reason.
> (2) Web apps are a thing.
They aren't good enough, and if they were don't worry every company would try to avoid paying the high store tax. (Hence why it's not going to happen)
> (3) This problem would still exist if iOS didn't exist.
Yes, that's why we need open standards to lower the barrier of competition.