Interview, Podcast
a16z Podcast | Searching for Mobile's Third OS
- Cyanogen targets a global platform capturing "well over 6 billion users" within the "next 5 to 10 years," anticipating growth driven by "emerging markets" such as China, India, Russia, and Brazil where volume shipments will accelerate significantly.
- The strategy involves a "radical transformation" in hardware economics, with "next year" projections for "$50 and $75 dollar phones" and "$140 devices" matching iPhone performance, potentially causing the "decimation of tier one OEMs" like Samsung who cannot compete on low-end pricing.
- Future market dynamics are predicted to shift away from branded hardware toward software ecosystems, with Apple's market share expected to become "negligible" in regions where Android dominates and its ability to sustain margins threatened by hardware commoditization and competitor parity.
- Cyanogen plans to deploy geographically optimized software stacks for local partners, such as BBM in Indonesia, rather than a single global stack, to facilitate experiences that "do not exist within the iOS or the Android world" over the "next 12 to 18 months."
- The vision includes a transition where computing becomes "transparent" and services "activate and manifest spontaneously" based on environment, eventually rendering core services "invisible" and shifting user identification toward "sets of experiences" and "billing relationships" within "10 to 15 years."
- Success in creating a third mobile OS is forecast to require a software-centric approach, as hardware-focused companies like Nokia or BlackBerry are deemed unlikely to succeed, while AI and machine learning entities require core system access to thrive as standalone entities.
- Innovation is expected to occur "faster and more prominently" in emerging markets over the "next five years," with mobile-first regions already surpassing mature markets in product and service advancement before impacting global standards.
- Specific predictions note that local "kings" like Micromax will "surpass Samsung" in volume shipments in specific regions, while deep kernel optimizations enable lower-cost devices to perform like higher-end models, reducing the relevance of hardware price distinctions.