At the moment theres only really 3 competitors for tablet OS's, Windows RT, iOS 6 and Android 4.2. Do you think theres room for another brand to release a OS for tablets?
I think it's more a question of is there anybody else who can compete on the same level as Microsoft, Apple, and Google. Because unless you have similar money and resources as them, your chances of competing with them are pretty much non-existent and if you can't compete with them then you're pretty much irrelevant, except for maybe a niche audience.
If anybody has a chance it'd probably be RIM, but I'm not holding my breath. We already saw what happened to HP/Palm and WebOS.
I would say though Palm / WebOS was pretty boring, nothing particually new or any done well. Surely that was a factor to the OS failing?
I'm very doubtful that any company can successfully penetrate the mobile OS market at this stage in the game, mainly because of apps. You need that third party support to be able to offer a viable ecosystem. There's really not much to say. It's not about "room", it's about the ability to compete with three enormous super companies.
There's one company who might rise from the ashes..... Nokia....
They have one of the best chances, considering there are still a lot of Nokia users out there. If they can succesfully produce and advertise an OS, then who knows? They might join the fray.
Also, Mozilla is also developing their own OS, so maybe they stand a chance?
Is Nokia still selling phones with their own OS? I wasn't really paying much attention to them other than what they're doing with Microsoft and the Windows Phone OS.
Well, of course they wouldn't phase out every Symbian( S40 and S60) phone they made. That would put a toll on their sales, since some people are still buying them.
WP8, if it gets apps and fixes some of the basics, would be great, and a good 3rd option.
I had an HTC HD7 for a few months last year. I absolutely loved WP7 and WP7.5. The only thing that bugged me was, as you say, the apps. It's not that they necessarily didn't exist-- they were just garbage. Literally every third party app I used was extremely laggy and prone to crashes. However, I doubt that will be a problem for most mainstream consumers since the OS has such excellent native support for Facebook, Twitter, and email. I'm excited to see what new Windows Phones will be out by next November when it's time for an upgrade.