Android existed before Google acquired it. So there's an interesting wrinkle there.
But, PalmOS existed before Android and iOS. And Blackberry. Sailfish may have also, I just don't recall.
this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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Android started out as a framework for blackberry. So probably we'd all be using blackberries.
And taking that a step further, I believe it was Blackberry that was proliferating the free text messages thing at the time (so long as it was to another Blackberry) so that could even have led to not enough market room for third-parties like WhatsApp and Kik to dominate the way they did.
No kidding? I don't recall that.
First I read was in Windows NT mag about 1999,they had a working prototype, but without a touch screen.
Of course it wasn't called Android, yet.
Windows Phone may have been a lot more successful and we'd have much better UI than we do now.
We might even get Linux phones. (I know android is Linux calm down. I just mean a more natural Linux design. Not bubble icons everywhere)
I can't believe no one mentioned Maemo and MeeGo, I stand to this day that my Nokia N9 was the best smartphone I ever had because of the OS, I only switched because Nokia abandoned it in favor of Windows phone which made apps stop supporting it and no new apps being released for it, if it hadn't been for that I wouldn't have switched to Android.
I think both Apple and fictitious closed Android would be way more interchangeable and data from within would be more portable. Developers would get more of a cut. The saving grace for Google in the real world is that they can do Apple shenanigans while pointing at the open-source availability of Android and not get dumped in hotter antitrust water. If we only had two OSs and both were closed especially regulators in Europe would hit both of them much harder. And like tougher environmental restrictions on cars became the de facto US standard for everyone, the forced equal playing field (the EU guys LOVE an equal playing field) would over time make shit better for all users everywhere.
If there was no Android I think we would have a long list of failed attempts to build one that all fail because every company wanted to build their own walled gardens, and didn't get enough traction. iOS probably would have succeeded thanks to Apple marketing budgets and their somewhat cultish follower base. But I suspect it would have followed more the initial Steve Jobs idea of doing most stuff in browser; the app revolution wouldn't have happened. So there would be a big iOS share and then the lower 30% or so would be fractured into other walled gardens for poor people. One result of that would be an earlier agreement on a RCS-like texting solution and not just in the States but everywhere. Because more players would have a stake in seamless communication because stuff like WhatsApp (a reaction to high texting rates, mostly in Europe) and blue/green bubblr iMessage did not happen.