Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Tesla isn’t planning to launch a smartphone, CEO Elon Musk mentioned throughout a podcast.
- Musk mentioned Tesla would make a cellphone if Google and Apple censored apps and acted as gatekeepers.
- Some items of the puzzle are there for a Tesla cellphone, however historical past reveals that this isn’t a good suggestion.
Rumors and disinformation a couple of Tesla smartphone have been circulating for years now, however firm CEO Elon Musk has addressed the subject in a latest interview.
“No, we’re not doing a cellphone,” Musk informed comic Joe Rogan on the Joe Rogan Expertise podcast. The billionaire added that Tesla was “most likely” in a greater place to create a non-Android and non-iOS smartphone than different corporations, pointing to the automaker’s software program.
“But it surely’s not one thing we wanna do except now we have to or one thing,” he defined.
Musk outlined what it could take for Tesla to step into the smartphone area:
If Apple and Google slash Android began doing actually dangerous issues, like, I don’t know, censorship of apps or… simply being like gatekeepers, in a extremely dangerous means, then I assume we’d make a cellphone (sic).
It’s price noting that regulatory companies around the globe, most notably the European Union, dominated that Apple and Google had been gatekeepers within the smartphone house to various levels.
The argument for and in opposition to a Tesla cellphone
Tesla’s leisure system in its automobiles certainly offers entry to a wide range of apps and video games, so it looks like this software program could possibly be a basis of types for any future non-Android smartphone. It additionally stands to purpose that Tesla may leverage SpaceX’s Starlink satellite tv for pc service for some type of connectivity. The corporate is already testing a so-called direct-to-cell service for texting assist and emergency alerts on T-Cellular smartphones.
In saying so, it’s far simpler mentioned than accomplished to create a smartphone that isn’t powered by Android or iOS. Microsoft discovered this out the exhausting means with its Home windows Cellphone platform. Microsoft struggled to courtroom builders to make apps for its platform. Simply the largest holdout was Google, which refused to deliver the vast majority of its providers to Microsoft’s platform. This may be a hurdle for Tesla too.
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Even basing your cellphone on Android isn’t a assure of success as Amazon came upon with its 2014 Fireplace Cellphone. This handset ran a forked model of Android dubbed Fireplace OS. Amazon had a number of benefits too, together with its personal app retailer and a large on-line retail footprint. That didn’t cease the Fireplace Cellphone from being a flop, though Fireplace OS continues to be used on the agency’s tablets and streaming devices.
We’ve additionally seen hundreds of thousands of Individuals stick with Apple due to iMessage, despite the fact that Apple’s messaging platform now helps RCS for extra fashionable texting between iPhones and Android telephones. So that is one other huge impediment going through a possible Tesla cellphone.
It must also go with out saying that Musk’s dealing with of Twitter doesn’t bode nicely for a Tesla cellphone, both, as the corporate’s valuation has reportedly plummeted because the billionaire acquired it.
