Ask HN: Worthy phone OS to dedicate dev time to?

4 points by yawn 4 years ago | 5 comments

Aside from Android/iOS, what other Smart Phone OSes have captured any kind of market? I'm considering spending my personal project time developing apps for something other than the Big 2. Is there anything out there that other devs are excited about? Anything picking up steam lately?

thesuperbigfrog 4 years ago |

>> Aside from Android/iOS, what other Smart Phone OSes have captured any kind of market?

At this time, none:

https://earthweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/image-119-10...

There are some non-iOS, non-Android phones such as PinePhone, (https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/) but they do not have any significant marketshare.

toast0 4 years ago |

S60 and Blackberry captured plenty of market, but they don't have it now.

KaiOS is marketed as a featurephone OS, but is Android + Gecko? so it's smartish. It's got some marketshare, but not that much. I think it's got more potential than Tizen anyway, and I don't think there's anything else out there with current support that targets regular users.

ksec 4 years ago |

KaiOS ( Firefox OS ) is the only one with some usage. 150M, around 3.3% usage. The other 96% are all iOS / Android.

yen223 4 years ago | |

3% seems rather high if I'm being honest. In my little social bubble I don't think I can name one person who uses a KaiOS phone, let alone 3 out of 100.

Are KaiOS users like concentrated in a specific country or something?

BoysenberryPi 4 years ago | | |

Yes, KaiOS users are pretty much all in India. KaiOS is basically a step up from a feature phone but not quite at the level of something like Android or iOS so the phones it runs on are very cheap.