BlackBerry Trying to Force Popular Services on to Its Platform
In a recent blog post, Blackberry's CEO John Chen used net neutrality as a reference point to advocate an app neutrality concept. In his vision, the government should pass a law that forces certain "vital" applications to create versions of themselves for all the available platforms. According to Mr. Chen, apps like iMessage or Netflix should be forced to become available for all platforms including Blackberry and Windows Phone, and not only for the two giants on the market: iOS and Android.
Truth be told, certain mobile operating systems, like Windows Phone or Blackberry, are put at a huge disadvantage as many users avoid them for their lack of applications. However, I'm curious what would Mr. Chen have said about such an idea eight years ago, when Blackberry was dominating the mobile market by developing cool apps for their own OS. Furthermore, other companies like Samsung, managed not only to survive but also to thrive by adapting to the new market requirements without having to adopt Android or iOS.
On top of that, if this idea would ever become a reality, it would create a very dangerous precedent. Both Google and Apple fought very hard to get to the "top of the food chain" and if a certain operating system is considered "irrelevant" by developers, forcing them to accept it is not a viable solution. While it's fair to say that Android and iOS are dominating the market, it's pretty hard to call it a monopoly when two giants are fighting for supremacy.
