GenAI Risk to Mac, Windows & Android Ecosystem : APS
Leadership Guide
Software Industry is evolving from last five decades. There are few players who have established their legacy. Three top players in this game is undoubtably are Apple, Microsoft and Android. All three of them has captured so much real estate in software world. They are irreplicable for a very long time. There is such a huge dependency on how world works. World cannot manage their sudden absence. It will literally stop. In my opinion they are as important as few major states of the world if not more. Combined with Internet they can be called soft electricity. We all will certainly agree given a choice between government, religion vs electricity. Its importance is coming in the line of oxygen, water, food, electricity and then these software Ecosystem. World cannot handle their sudden absence.
Why is there such a huge dependency
The answer is very simple; its amount of solution builds over them over time. There are millions and millions of software and applications which are made to work on them. Its there play store or application pool which make them totally irreplaceable. Internet Browsers have done their fare bit to take away the dependency. However, dependency is still enormous. Many of the software’s were not made perfect. They evolved correctly over time. This means there is no way of replicating the solution even if someone is willing to invest in it. It might be very difficult to make another windows, apple. But its next to impossible to replicate all the apps.
There are other minor factors like support, existing userbase, existing corporate dependency etc. These are way to minor in comparison to hardened ecosystems of hardened apps which exists.
How its different than other products ex SAP, Salesforce.
You will argue - Products like SAP and salesforce also in similar situation, they own the core software, and their customization is developed by hundreds of people above it.
Other product company may look similar safe, but the possibility of new company coming with complete migration strategy is high. It’s very smaller number of customers paying lot of money. So, it’s viable to migrate them to new solution. It does happen because that software is even more specialized to handle that domain.
How money is made of this dependency
There are multitude of ways, this dependency become money making business. Just like amazon has key selling product from prime seller. Similarly, many important solutions like word, outlook is internal. External Application developers pay fees, show advertisement and have to keep upgrading and indirectly investing into your ecosystem. We can call ourselves fortunate to have three major players in this space.
Example of failed competitors
OS like Ubuntu, which I have personally used and it’s quite a developer friendly. Got lot of ecosystems in all other aspects. Simply not able to make any significant dent in end-user market. As it’s not possible to cope up with required application and quality and support of the application. I would certainly say, ubuntu fans will disagree with me and say it is making a good fight in Desktop space. I would not disagree to it. It’s just not the scale which can stop the world. There was Firefox phone, browser apps. etc etc Windows phone was another excellent example. Microsoft cannot manage to get into Mobile space. It just shows how difficult it is.
What GenAI bring to table:
GenAI brings three things to table.
Agents who first analyzes the existing App
Agents which develop the app
Agents which can use the app to see if it has decent quality
Now look at it, how this changes the game completely. As the Agents start getting perfect and perfect over time. If a new OS provider, take the list of top ten thousand apps. Now agents start developing all these apps and are provided out of box along with the operating system. No need to buy it. This means, it will start satisfying 99.9 percent of the users. We can call it Artificially generated Play store (APS)
Who will be interested.
All the organization who are not in core business of software will be more then interested in this kind of setup. They are just required to provide there requirements of applications to Artificial Play store and later verify if it is good to publish. So, the flow changes from existing.
How APS changes App Lifecycle
Existing - Identify requirement → Hire required developers or IT firm —> Develop an app → Tests the App → Big Guys approve it - Available to consumers. → Repete for maintenance.
New - Develop the Requirements → APS develops it →APS tests it → Requirements person Approve it - Available to consumers.
Migrate using existing code via AI etc. will also be another option.
This is obviously not that simple, all Apps requires a backend which might be required to maintained by respective firm. Or alternatively that can also be an option of generated and setup automatically on cloud for relatively smaller apps. This is going into too many details. Ex -
Who might be first do it.
Different governments of the world. Who are the loss of control. Since, these ecosystems are larger than government setup itself. They are living with them. Once they get an opportunity to develop their own OS and all required software. They might start giving a shot at it. Attest to start with for their staff. Example - Android is largest OS in China, who knows they start seeing this as option to change it.
Another beneficiary is OS like Ubuntu, they can potentially crack into the spaces of likes of these big guys.
Windows, Mac and Android might also try to get into each other space.
How long it will take
This is not happening tomorrow. We are talking in terms of something starting minimally after five years and really showing something in 10 years. This is still lot closer than something never possible.
What can trigger it to be faster.
Upgradation of Application to support Generative AI and Quantum computing, may push company to redevelop their Apps. This can trigger faster adoption of automatically generated code.
Tools which generate apps for different ecosystem just based on prompts can also make it possible for other alternatives to come.
Key Take Away
This is some of the hardest problem where there will be attempt to replicate collective work of humanity for few decades. AI will try to replicate in few years.
It’s a complex decision with Personalization/Security/Comprehensive/Regulations. Very wild guess will be mushroom of OS regulated by government coming in future.
Real Key Take Away for Ourself
Unless we are not developing Apps using latest prompt engineering techniques. It will not be possible to develop and test it for mushroom of operating systems which are going to come in future
Solution for IOS, Android, Windows
Let them think about it. It is too much for me comprehend and forecast.