Recently,we askedif it was possible for Europe to have a dominant smartphone again.
The answer was simple: no, not unless theres some sort of miracle.
But, here at TNW, we had another question: could Europe launch its own mobileoperating system?
Why do we need a European mobile OS?
On first inspection, its an excellent idea.
A European operating system could wrestle some of the power back from Silicon Valley behemothsiOSandAndroid.
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Thats a staggering amount of power and income all of which the EU could make use of.
But… is a European OS even possible?
To find out, I got in touch with several experts.
One of them was Jan Stryjak, an associate director atCounterpoint Research.
Two is enough, he says, referring to iOS and Android.
There were attempts in the past to make Windows a third dominant mobile OS, but these failed.
WhileWindows MobileandSymbianhad their days in the sun, Android and iOS edged both out.
Well, there goes that dream.
One of Fairphones core customer segments is precisely the tech niche that cares about privacy.
Huang was unable to give me numbers on how many people use /e/OS on Fairphone devices.
The closest figure I found came from Gael Duval, the creator of the system.
In 2021,he claimedthere are between 25,000 and 35,000 users of /e/OS in total.
For context,there are over a billion iOS users and that doesnt include other Apple operating systems.
What weve found, then, is a pretty hard ceiling for a privacy-focused mobile OS.
Currently, this is a niche option for niche devices.
Ending things there though is boring.
Time to pretend
Lets say that several EU member states disregard the above.
Well, one things for certain: it wont be plain sailing.
The challenge is that its difficult to bring everyone together to work towards this goal.
Lets not forget that the EU consists of 27 individual nations, all with different cultures and agendas.
The world is getting bigger, but closer at the same time, he tells TNW.
For almost every function in modern society, you gotta have interoperability within Europe and other markets.
In other words, software needs to work with other software, or things come tumbling down.
Itd be an undertaking of galactic proportions.
People arent willing to wait that long for software to get good.
They want it to work and they want it to work now.
If theres a Europe-specific OS, can it operate in Russia or China?
The answer, likely, is no.
In short, badly.
To put that another way, itd be pretty useless.
