At Twitter, the Third Mobile OS Isn't an OS at All
Source: Sara Yin
Suddenly, everyone wants to know which mobile OS will challenge Apple's iOS and Google's Android as a third option. Twitter's Michael Abbott has an unexpected answer.
Speaking at the GigaOM conference Tuesday in San Francisco, Abbott said that, if he had to choose, the Web itself would step in as the third mobile OS. Abbott, the vice president of engineering at Twitter, said that native HTML 5 applications running on the Web would probably supersede the need for a third mobile OS.
"The third player is maybe the Web," Abbott said. "I say that because I think HTML 5 is continuing to add separate aspects... HTML 5 and the experiences you can build - I'm really excited about it."
Abbott also said that in terms of usage of Twitter, the Web comes in third, behind the other two OSes. He did not say whether that was strictly Twitter's mobile site, access via the desktop, or both.
One of the tech industry's favorite parlor games is speculating about what company will have the third-largest smartphone OS in the coming years behind Android and iOS.
The split seems to break down between RIM's BlackBerry, the ailing, but third-largest platform, and Microsoft's Windows Phone 7, the miniscule new player with almost nowhere to go but up. In August, comScore reported that Windows Phone had 5.7 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, compared to 41.8 percent on Android, 27 percent on iOS, and 21.7 percent on RIM. However, RIM's market share has been on a continuous decline for months, while Windows Phone has grown at a snail-like pace.
Verizon Communications CEO Lowell McAdam thinks a three-way system could evolve within a year.
"The carriers are beginning to coalesce around the need for a third ecosystem," McAdam said during a talk at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference. "Over the next 12 months I think it will coalesce and you will start to see one emerge as a legitimate third ecosystem." He didn't say which platform would win out, however.
Abbott, who left Palm as its director of software and services last year for Twitter, said he wasn't sure who if any, company should buy the WebOS platform. "The landscape has changed so dramatically," he said, saying he was "disappointed" with the way things worked out. "It takes a lot of the right talent to do the right software design, hardware design, and expand on the hardware."
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