Interestingly, the hard part is not the core "OS" code. There are many, many good open source OS's available for study (and/or license).
I realize I'm being pedantic. I think it illustrates my point: until the mid-90's, Computer Science would occasionally wish for a new OS to fix all the bad things about current OS's. Even the lack of a killer app was not considered insurmountable, because apps weren't that complex. Witness the proliferation of open source OS's.
As Android continues to dominate iOS in sheer numbers, it underscores just _why_ building a strong mobile phone OS is hard––enough that even Apple with all the early advantages still gets marginalized.
Android has:
• Open source OS (Google's/OEM's proprietary bits notwithstanding)
• Free SDK as the gold standard
• Multiple strong hardware vendors competing for the best designs and attempting to find underserved markets
• One central "authority" that champions consistentcy, interoperability, and polish (that google.com is the economic incentive to stay in charge of android becomes a strength for android––because unless another company thinks it can unseat google in their core business, they are not incentivized to try to take android from google either. Xiaomi and Samsung's Tizen may be vanity forks but other than vertical integration they have no edge in the larger android picture)
I realize I'm being pedantic. I think it illustrates my point: until the mid-90's, Computer Science would occasionally wish for a new OS to fix all the bad things about current OS's. Even the lack of a killer app was not considered insurmountable, because apps weren't that complex. Witness the proliferation of open source OS's.
As Android continues to dominate iOS in sheer numbers, it underscores just _why_ building a strong mobile phone OS is hard––enough that even Apple with all the early advantages still gets marginalized.
Android has:
• Open source OS (Google's/OEM's proprietary bits notwithstanding)
• Free SDK as the gold standard
• Multiple strong hardware vendors competing for the best designs and attempting to find underserved markets
• One central "authority" that champions consistentcy, interoperability, and polish (that google.com is the economic incentive to stay in charge of android becomes a strength for android––because unless another company thinks it can unseat google in their core business, they are not incentivized to try to take android from google either. Xiaomi and Samsung's Tizen may be vanity forks but other than vertical integration they have no edge in the larger android picture)
• Complete administrative backend (cloud, app store, PR, etc.)