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Comment by Lalabadie | Hacker News Reader

Same strategy as a Kindle, Fire TV or a Portal – a proprietary gateway to services they sell, probably sold at or below cost. It's in line with their work on ChatGPT voice mode and such.

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Funnily enough Amazon did try making a subsidised smartphone with deep integration of their services and it was a disastrous flop. Kindle and Fire TV succeeded by not directly competing with smartphones, but rather complementing them by being good at things that smartphones can do but not well.

If OpenAI plans to fork Android into their own thing then I can't see it going any better than Amazon's attempt did, and if it's a wearable like Humane/Rabbit then it needs an answer to "why isn't this an app".

To be fair the phone failures were at least in part due to Googles anti competitive behaviours that they are being (have been?) fined for.

> fork Android into their own thing

They could make a custom version of Android and make a device that delivers what the Rabbit R1 said it would but didn’t.

A device that can run Android apps, but where the device can interact with the apps on its own based on your voice commands.

The idea of the Rabbit R1 was good, kind of. OpenAI could pull it off.

Ah yes, following the winning strategy of Fire devices

Kindle is good stuff though. On the other hand, I can't imagine what a dedicated device would bring to the table that a smartphone / tablet would not in this case...

It’s probably a wearable device and the most instant uncanny valley nerd alert device imaginable, that makes bluetools and google glass wearers seem almost normal.

Something like the flop Humane:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/humane-ai-hands-on-my-life-...

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