Ask HN: Are Google's Android and Apple's iOS “too big to fail”?

4 pointszepearl3y ago2 comments

Just a honest question.

As a starting point I'm thinking about the global market share of mobile smartphones being split between just 2 companies: Google's Android (X manufacturers & X vendors) and Apple's iOS (1 manufacturer & 1 vendor).

If any of those two companies would cease to exist...

(for any reason/event, it doesn't matter what would be the reason/event or if it would be predictable - e.g. Apple getting a crazy CEO that makes a continuous series of bad decisions or Google becoming outdated because competitors deliver better search results with their Artificial Intelligence frameworks, whatever - something like this happened to some established companies in the past, no reason to believe that the future will be different)

...then we would probably have an impact on a planetary scale due to the amount of users that each party/company has?

This gets then linked as well to the services that they offer (not just on mobile phones) like e.g. 2-factor-authentication, email, hosting and/or data-processing, whatever - a LOT of people/businesses rely on those companies for one or multiple reasons.

Therefore, in my opinion, Google and Apple (their OS + their services) are "too big to fail", maybe even more than "too big to fail"-banks are => what do you think?

Cheers :)

2 comments

2 comments · 2 top-level

hayst4ck3y ago

I would assume that those assets would be valuable and the source could be sold to an interested party such as Microsoft. Even if the companies ceased to exist, it's unlikely the assets would.

Android itself is sharded and open sourced, so there is almost no risk for android I would assume.

For such a large piece of infrastructure, the government bailing out with money is possible as well.

When a bank fails it's because it has more liability than assets which then forces the assets to be fire-sold and a loss to be realized which then causes a run on the bank, which forces more assets to be fire-sold etc. Other banks take on the both the assets and liability which can then put them at risk of failing. Too big to fail means that nobody can acquire their assets and liabilities because they are too big.

That's my probably naive, probably wrong understanding anyway.

ano888883y ago

I think there is a new oppoutunity to design a native AI first mobile OS that reimagine how developers and users will use this.