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UK competition watchdog begins probe into Apple and Google's total domination of the mobile landscape

doublelayer Silver badge

They asked about barriers. That's a barrier. Because most of the time, the driver is written by the component manufacturer to work with an open spec, not by you. That's a real barrier to other OSes, and it's not at all similar to the landscape of computers, where standardization allows most hardware to work because they implement device-specific code on the device and use an agreed-upon standard which is supported by kernels.

Most of the drivers concerned are written by the device manufacturers specifically for Android, not Linux, and they don't give out the specifications needed to write your own. You can, through tedious effort and legal uncertainty, reverse-engineer the component and try to write one, but that's a significant barrier because your competitors just buy the pieces and use the manufacturer's code. That is why I used the PinePhone example. They are using a CPU which is several years old and underpowered compared to modern phones because it's one with Linux support. Despite the fact that Android devices use the Linux kernel, you can't take one and boot mainline on it due to software unavailable for it. Therefore, you are wrong both about who writes drivers and what is currently available for phones.

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