Musk To Build His Own Smartphone If Google And Apple Ban Twitter

Elon Musk has indicated that he would consider building a third smartphone ecosystem should either Google or Apple decide to ban Twitter from their app stores. America’s right celebrates him in advance.

The head of Tesla, SpaceX, and now also Twitter, Elon Musk, has promised that he wants to bring “his own smartphone” onto the market if Google and Apple decide to operate the two largest mobile app stores to remove the Twitter app from their offer.

Musk’s Take

Although he hopes that it will never come to that, he is prepared in such a case to start his own mobile phone project. Musk was responding to a tweet from ultra-conservative TV commentator Liz Wheeler, who previously suggested that Musk should launch his own smartphone because “easily half the country [USA] likes to respond to the partisan and… sniffing” (products from) Apple and Google would do without”.

In the past, Wheeler has often attracted attention as a representative of extreme right-wing views and an advocate of all sorts of conspiracy theories, including the claim that the US right is being restricted in its freedom of expression by allegedly politically left-leaning or at least “liberal” US tech companies because the companies don’t just give free rein to all content on their platforms.

Appstore Removal is not easy

In fact, Apple and Google have repeatedly banned apps from their stores that distributed illegal content or served as a platform for hate speech and hate speech. Since Musk is increasingly removing the restrictions on Twitter that prevented former US President Trump, who was being pursued by the US authorities in various proceedings, from spreading his crude theses and pure hate speech, there are probably justified fears that Twitter could be removed from app stores. However, you can also simply access the service via a web version from the browser.

Launching your own smartphone is now easier than ever. There are various design houses and OEM providers who offer white-label solutions for sale, so to speak. You can provide these “unbranded” devices with any logo you like and then offer them to your own customers.

It becomes more difficult with your own operating system. Although an Android fork within the framework of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) would be possible without further ado, you would have to do without Google’s official app store. Various examples show how difficult it is to get app providers to make their software available in alternative stores, above all Huawei and, years ago, Microsoft.