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I can't understand how Mozilla failed to execute on Firefox OS. From where I am at it was a massive opportunity for Mozilla and Web developers all round the wo

I can't understand how Mozilla failed to execute on Firefox OS. From where I am at it was a massive opportunity for Mozilla and Web developers all round the world. They didn't have to take on Android and iOS directly, but may have gotten there eventually thru 'worse is better'. Imagine a web developer learning just a few APIs and being being able to customize their web app for smart TVs

aduitsis 6y ago
For some reason, yesterday's HN post "I can't keep up with React" came to mind :)
- julenx 6y ago
  Out of curiosity, which post is that? I cannot find it.
  - aduitsis 6y ago
    https://medium.com/swlh/sorry-react-but-i-cant-keep-up-anymore-6b6c8415708c https://medium.com/swlh/sorry-react-but-i-cant-keep-up-anymo...
heavyset_go 6y ago
> Imagine a web developer learning just a few APIs and being being able to customize their web app for smart TVs This was WebOS in 2009. Windows Phone, WebOS, Meego and Ubuntu Phone all "failed" around the same time period as Firefox OS. I have a hard time laying blame solely on Mozilla there.
- jdc 6y ago
  FWIW webOS is still alive and well. https://www.webosose.org https://www.webosose.org https://github.com/webosose https://github.com/webosose
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    LG also has it running on smart TVs. I had the Pre over a decade ago, and having webOS in my pocket was great.
  - Yhippa 6y ago
    Hey, thanks for this link. I was a huge fan of webOS since the days of the Palm Pre. I noticed that this runs on the Raspberry Pi 4. Do you know what the use case for this is? Store displays?
    - unparagoned 6y ago
      The lg smart TVs use webOS as their OS. So I guess everything you do with the TV uses it
  - jdc 6y ago
    Also see Enact, the Enyo framework's sucessor. https://enactjs.com https://enactjs.com
- TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
  What was the hard part that caused Android and iOS to win? Was it convincing manufacturers to ship with them? Or was it just the first mover advantage for iOS and the network effects of the Play Store with Android?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - boogies 6y ago
    Some part of it was MS buying Nokia and killing Meego, just as the N9 won glowing praise and awards with it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N9#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N9#Reception > The Nokia N9 was announced at Nokia's Connections event in Singapore, June 2011. The reception for the device has been very positive, citing the MeeGo v1.2 Harmattan UI, pseudo-buttonless design, polycarbonate unibody construction and its NFC capabilities. Still, many reviewers did not recommend to buy the N9 only because of Nokia's earlier decision to drop MeeGo for Windows Phone for future smartphones – often questioning this decision at the same time. Engadget's editor Vlad Savov said in June 2011 that "it's a terrific phone that's got me legitimately excited to use it, but its future is clouded by a parent that's investing its time and money into building up a whole other OS." In a later review, Engadget writes: "Love at first sight — this is possibly the most beautiful phone ever made," and "MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan is such a breath of fresh air it will leave you gasping — that is, until you remember that you're dealing with a dead man walking."
  - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
    Yes. Mozilla couldn’t get the mobile operators to sell a phone pre-loaded with FirefoxOS. And no one is going to buy a phone and reimage it. > I can't understand how Mozilla failed to execute on Firefox OS. This is naive. They did execute, and failed. That’s different than not executing at all. You can’t break into this segment without cooperation from the mobile phone operators... even in India and Southeast Asia whom were the primary target markets (less disposable income than Americans) I had a Firefox OS phone. There was nothing great about it. It was average (by intention in order to work on restricted devices). I never used it to make calls, I used it for development. And it only had a wifi connection because I did not buy service for it. There was nothing really “disruptive” about it as I recall. $20 Android phones destroyed any hope after the mobile operators turned a blind eye. p.s. I still have the phone.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  MeeGo was a bizarre affair. There was I think Maemo, Moblin, LImo, SLP, Bada, Leste, MeeGo, Mer, Tizen, Sailfish, Nemo... all forks, merges, reforks. They seemed to spend all their time and energy continually rebranding, forming and disbanding consortiums, creating new websites and logos. They never just got on with it.
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    > seemed to spend all their time and energy continually rebranding So, what would have happened to Android, if Google didn't have the Maps / Play Store big stick? Every device manufacturer wants to differentiate. None of them are good at it.
  - ahartmetz 6y ago
    Except one time they did and it was wonderful - the N9. Then Elop came and canceled it, as ordered by the the Nokia board that hired him.
    - usr1106 6y ago
      Well, wonderful... It was a huge mess. Maemo was gtk based until Nokia bought Qt. Guess there was some friction in the conversion. Maemo was deb based until Nokia management brought Intel into the boat for no technical reasons, then they switched to rpm. Well, the packaging is a relatively small detail, but many other parts of the distro saw similar switches from choice A to choice B for no real benefit. Friction after friction. Elop was an incompetent leader, but he had not been involved in creating the mess. He went for a worse option, but that does not say that Meego would have ever succeeded. Yes, I am stuck in the past myself, typing this on SailfishOS. But one has to see the realities.
      - ahartmetz 6y ago
        The main problem with Meego etc was that they never released a damn phone. The N9 was both released and a very good phone. That was the "wonderful" part. I know that it was a bit of a mess technically behind the scenes. But it was also a mess that was possible to clean up.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > Windows Phone, WebOS, Meego and Ubuntu Phone all "failed" around the same time period as Firefox OS. I have a hard time laying blame solely on Mozilla there. I've seen a number of comments on Windows Phone since then (on HN), and one and all they emphasize how much better and nicer Windows Phone was -- from a consumer perspective -- than any other phone. What was the failure? This isn't a retrospective that makes any sense.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    I feel the same way about webOS: it was better and nicer than Android or iOS, and we had to wait half of a decade before Android and iOS adopted some of the features it shipped with in 2009. As of 2019, however, 52.4% of the mobile OS market belongs to iOS, and 47% to Android[1]. Neither of our favorite mobile phone OSes have succeeded in comparison. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held-by-smartphone-platforms-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held...
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      > As of 2019, however, 52.4% of the mobile OS market belongs to iOS, and 47% to Android. This doesn't pass the sniff test, unless you're doing something weird like measuring the mobile OS market in dollars spent on phones. > Neither of our favorite mobile phone OSes have succeeded in comparison. To be clear, I have no experience of Windows Phone. I'm just bemused that 100% of comments about what it was like are so glowing. For some other product, you'd expect to see some comments saying "this was the greatest product ever to be commercially available" and some others saying "no, I had one of those, and it sucked". That doesn't seem to happen for Windows Phone.
      - cozzyd 6y ago
        The source is for the US, where it's at least plausible.
  - skinkestek 6y ago
    > What was the failure? This isn't a retrospective that makes any sense. No YouTube, no Snapchat etc. With YouTube Google used their position to keep it that way. It also wouldn't surprise me if someone told certain app developers that "that's a nice app you have there, it would be shame if there was a bug in the Play store that made it hard ro find". When it comes to App Store I have heard it is pretty well established that you won't get featured, no matter how great your app is if it is available on other platforms.
pfraze 6y ago
Well you know what's really tragic: FFOS is a pretty big success. It was forked and became KaiOS, which has decent market-share in India.
- higerordermap 6y ago
  It didn't need to be KaiOS. The OS on jio phones is severely crippled and it could be any OS with a webview. I don't count it as success of FFOS, at least on technical merits.
old-gregg 6y ago
> I can't understand how Mozilla failed to execute on Firefox OS. Because this product could only be sold to a hardware maker. It doesn't matter how good it was/is, because hardware makers are smart enough now not to rely on a 3rd party supplier of an OS, in fact they've been working hard on degoogling Android as much as possible. Another failed alternative that comes to mind is WebOS, and yes indeed, it got acquired by LG for the reasons above.
Narishma 6y ago
> I can't understand how Mozilla failed to execute on Firefox OS. Wasn't it initially too slow and bloated for the hardware they released it on?
apozem 6y ago
Bill Gates explained why everybody but Google and Apple failed at mobile OSes: > “In the software world, particularly for platforms, these are winner-take-all markets. So the greatest mistake ever is whatever mismanagement I engaged in that caused Microsoft not to be what Android is. That is, Android is the standard non-Apple phone platform. That was a natural thing for Microsoft to win. It really is winner take all. If you’re there with half as many apps or 90 percent as many apps, you’re on your way to complete doom. There’s room for exactly one non-Apple operating system." https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/24/18715202/microsoft-bill-gates-android-biggest-mistake-interview https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/24/18715202/microsoft-bill-g...
- Brakenshire 6y ago
  Looking at wikipedia KaiOS seems to be the second mobile OS in India now, ahead of the iPhone. I don’t think those rules apply to a system which relies of web technologies, because you have such an enormous base of developers and development infrastructure.
  - tjoff 6y ago
    KaiOS is a joke though... More akin to your desk calculator than a phone that we have become accustomed to. They sell because they are cheap, not on any other merit.
    - Bayart 6y ago
      Being cheap is the greatest merit of any consumer tech.
      - stjohnswarts 6y ago
        you'll never convince apple of that.
      - dsohn0 6y ago
        Why would you say something that obviously is completely wrong
dkdk8283 6y ago
Remember launching a phone just isn’t FirefoxOS: you need a device to load it on, a carrier willing to support it (this is the biggest hurdle by far), and to negotiate the baseband blob that you have absolutely no reason idea what it does and has DMA. I have personally gone through carrier negotiations and they’re the reason why Android phones come with bloat ware and people go to such lengths to build and distribute minimalistic Android systems. When the pandemic is over and the world opens again go visit Mobile World Congress. Bring a tissue because the industry might make you cry.
jshen 6y ago
The short answer, they were too late.
rewgs 6y ago
I didn't pay much attention to the project at the time, but: Might it have something to do with the word "OS" in the title? It's never worked except for Apple, but because Apple is selling a whole product, not an OS, it doesn't seem to hit in the same way. Marketing something as "____ OS" appears to more or less guarantee a marketing failure.
O_H_E 6y ago
The techAltar youtube channel might have some useful content on the subject.
zelly 6y ago
A lot of smart TV apps are already HTML and JavaScript webviews. You can create a webview app on Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, a ton of proprietary devices like cars or TVs. What benefit would Firefox OS bring here, besides creating another kludgy abstraction layer over the vendor hardware?
lenkite 6y ago
They just needed a bit of persistence. In a 5K run, they sprinted for 2K and then gave up and threw away the baton. Other companies picked what they ditched and profit now. Deeply irritating.

aduitsis 6y ago

For some reason, yesterday's HN post "I can't keep up with React" came to mind :)

julenx 6y ago
Out of curiosity, which post is that? I cannot find it.
- aduitsis 6y ago
  https://medium.com/swlh/sorry-react-but-i-cant-keep-up-anymore-6b6c8415708c https://medium.com/swlh/sorry-react-but-i-cant-keep-up-anymo...

heavyset_go 6y ago

> Imagine a web developer learning just a few APIs and being being able to customize their web app for smart TVs This was WebOS in 2009. Windows Phone, WebOS, Meego and Ubuntu Phone all "failed" around the same time period as Firefox OS. I have a hard time laying blame solely on Mozilla there.

jdc 6y ago
FWIW webOS is still alive and well. https://www.webosose.org https://www.webosose.org https://github.com/webosose https://github.com/webosose
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  LG also has it running on smart TVs. I had the Pre over a decade ago, and having webOS in my pocket was great.
- Yhippa 6y ago
  Hey, thanks for this link. I was a huge fan of webOS since the days of the Palm Pre. I noticed that this runs on the Raspberry Pi 4. Do you know what the use case for this is? Store displays?
  - unparagoned 6y ago
    The lg smart TVs use webOS as their OS. So I guess everything you do with the TV uses it
- jdc 6y ago
  Also see Enact, the Enyo framework's sucessor. https://enactjs.com https://enactjs.com
TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
What was the hard part that caused Android and iOS to win? Was it convincing manufacturers to ship with them? Or was it just the first mover advantage for iOS and the network effects of the Play Store with Android?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- boogies 6y ago
  Some part of it was MS buying Nokia and killing Meego, just as the N9 won glowing praise and awards with it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N9#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N9#Reception > The Nokia N9 was announced at Nokia's Connections event in Singapore, June 2011. The reception for the device has been very positive, citing the MeeGo v1.2 Harmattan UI, pseudo-buttonless design, polycarbonate unibody construction and its NFC capabilities. Still, many reviewers did not recommend to buy the N9 only because of Nokia's earlier decision to drop MeeGo for Windows Phone for future smartphones – often questioning this decision at the same time. Engadget's editor Vlad Savov said in June 2011 that "it's a terrific phone that's got me legitimately excited to use it, but its future is clouded by a parent that's investing its time and money into building up a whole other OS." In a later review, Engadget writes: "Love at first sight — this is possibly the most beautiful phone ever made," and "MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan is such a breath of fresh air it will leave you gasping — that is, until you remember that you're dealing with a dead man walking."
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  Yes. Mozilla couldn’t get the mobile operators to sell a phone pre-loaded with FirefoxOS. And no one is going to buy a phone and reimage it. > I can't understand how Mozilla failed to execute on Firefox OS. This is naive. They did execute, and failed. That’s different than not executing at all. You can’t break into this segment without cooperation from the mobile phone operators... even in India and Southeast Asia whom were the primary target markets (less disposable income than Americans) I had a Firefox OS phone. There was nothing great about it. It was average (by intention in order to work on restricted devices). I never used it to make calls, I used it for development. And it only had a wifi connection because I did not buy service for it. There was nothing really “disruptive” about it as I recall. $20 Android phones destroyed any hope after the mobile operators turned a blind eye. p.s. I still have the phone.
chrisseaton 6y ago
MeeGo was a bizarre affair. There was I think Maemo, Moblin, LImo, SLP, Bada, Leste, MeeGo, Mer, Tizen, Sailfish, Nemo... all forks, merges, reforks. They seemed to spend all their time and energy continually rebranding, forming and disbanding consortiums, creating new websites and logos. They never just got on with it.
- ethbr0 6y ago
  > seemed to spend all their time and energy continually rebranding So, what would have happened to Android, if Google didn't have the Maps / Play Store big stick? Every device manufacturer wants to differentiate. None of them are good at it.
- ahartmetz 6y ago
  Except one time they did and it was wonderful - the N9. Then Elop came and canceled it, as ordered by the the Nokia board that hired him.
  - usr1106 6y ago
    Well, wonderful... It was a huge mess. Maemo was gtk based until Nokia bought Qt. Guess there was some friction in the conversion. Maemo was deb based until Nokia management brought Intel into the boat for no technical reasons, then they switched to rpm. Well, the packaging is a relatively small detail, but many other parts of the distro saw similar switches from choice A to choice B for no real benefit. Friction after friction. Elop was an incompetent leader, but he had not been involved in creating the mess. He went for a worse option, but that does not say that Meego would have ever succeeded. Yes, I am stuck in the past myself, typing this on SailfishOS. But one has to see the realities.
    - ahartmetz 6y ago
      The main problem with Meego etc was that they never released a damn phone. The N9 was both released and a very good phone. That was the "wonderful" part. I know that it was a bit of a mess technically behind the scenes. But it was also a mess that was possible to clean up.
thaumasiotes 6y ago
> Windows Phone, WebOS, Meego and Ubuntu Phone all "failed" around the same time period as Firefox OS. I have a hard time laying blame solely on Mozilla there. I've seen a number of comments on Windows Phone since then (on HN), and one and all they emphasize how much better and nicer Windows Phone was -- from a consumer perspective -- than any other phone. What was the failure? This isn't a retrospective that makes any sense.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  I feel the same way about webOS: it was better and nicer than Android or iOS, and we had to wait half of a decade before Android and iOS adopted some of the features it shipped with in 2009. As of 2019, however, 52.4% of the mobile OS market belongs to iOS, and 47% to Android[1]. Neither of our favorite mobile phone OSes have succeeded in comparison. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held-by-smartphone-platforms-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held...
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    > As of 2019, however, 52.4% of the mobile OS market belongs to iOS, and 47% to Android. This doesn't pass the sniff test, unless you're doing something weird like measuring the mobile OS market in dollars spent on phones. > Neither of our favorite mobile phone OSes have succeeded in comparison. To be clear, I have no experience of Windows Phone. I'm just bemused that 100% of comments about what it was like are so glowing. For some other product, you'd expect to see some comments saying "this was the greatest product ever to be commercially available" and some others saying "no, I had one of those, and it sucked". That doesn't seem to happen for Windows Phone.
    - cozzyd 6y ago
      The source is for the US, where it's at least plausible.
- skinkestek 6y ago
  > What was the failure? This isn't a retrospective that makes any sense. No YouTube, no Snapchat etc. With YouTube Google used their position to keep it that way. It also wouldn't surprise me if someone told certain app developers that "that's a nice app you have there, it would be shame if there was a bug in the Play store that made it hard ro find". When it comes to App Store I have heard it is pretty well established that you won't get featured, no matter how great your app is if it is available on other platforms.

pfraze 6y ago

Well you know what's really tragic: FFOS is a pretty big success. It was forked and became KaiOS, which has decent market-share in India.

higerordermap 6y ago
It didn't need to be KaiOS. The OS on jio phones is severely crippled and it could be any OS with a webview. I don't count it as success of FFOS, at least on technical merits.

old-gregg 6y ago

> I can't understand how Mozilla failed to execute on Firefox OS. Because this product could only be sold to a hardware maker. It doesn't matter how good it was/is, because hardware makers are smart enough now not to rely on a 3rd party supplier of an OS, in fact they've been working hard on degoogling Android as much as possible. Another failed alternative that comes to mind is WebOS, and yes indeed, it got acquired by LG for the reasons above.

Narishma 6y ago

> I can't understand how Mozilla failed to execute on Firefox OS. Wasn't it initially too slow and bloated for the hardware they released it on?

apozem 6y ago

Bill Gates explained why everybody but Google and Apple failed at mobile OSes: > “In the software world, particularly for platforms, these are winner-take-all markets. So the greatest mistake ever is whatever mismanagement I engaged in that caused Microsoft not to be what Android is. That is, Android is the standard non-Apple phone platform. That was a natural thing for Microsoft to win. It really is winner take all. If you’re there with half as many apps or 90 percent as many apps, you’re on your way to complete doom. There’s room for exactly one non-Apple operating system." https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/24/18715202/microsoft-bill-gates-android-biggest-mistake-interview https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/24/18715202/microsoft-bill-g...

Brakenshire 6y ago
Looking at wikipedia KaiOS seems to be the second mobile OS in India now, ahead of the iPhone. I don’t think those rules apply to a system which relies of web technologies, because you have such an enormous base of developers and development infrastructure.
- tjoff 6y ago
  KaiOS is a joke though... More akin to your desk calculator than a phone that we have become accustomed to. They sell because they are cheap, not on any other merit.
  - Bayart 6y ago
    Being cheap is the greatest merit of any consumer tech.
    - stjohnswarts 6y ago
      you'll never convince apple of that.
    - dsohn0 6y ago
      Why would you say something that obviously is completely wrong

dkdk8283 6y ago

Remember launching a phone just isn’t FirefoxOS: you need a device to load it on, a carrier willing to support it (this is the biggest hurdle by far), and to negotiate the baseband blob that you have absolutely no reason idea what it does and has DMA. I have personally gone through carrier negotiations and they’re the reason why Android phones come with bloat ware and people go to such lengths to build and distribute minimalistic Android systems. When the pandemic is over and the world opens again go visit Mobile World Congress. Bring a tissue because the industry might make you cry.

jshen 6y ago

The short answer, they were too late.

rewgs 6y ago

I didn't pay much attention to the project at the time, but: Might it have something to do with the word "OS" in the title? It's never worked except for Apple, but because Apple is selling a whole product, not an OS, it doesn't seem to hit in the same way. Marketing something as "____ OS" appears to more or less guarantee a marketing failure.

O_H_E 6y ago

The techAltar youtube channel might have some useful content on the subject.

zelly 6y ago

A lot of smart TV apps are already HTML and JavaScript webviews. You can create a webview app on Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, a ton of proprietary devices like cars or TVs. What benefit would Firefox OS bring here, besides creating another kludgy abstraction layer over the vendor hardware?

lenkite 6y ago

They just needed a bit of persistence. In a 5K run, they sprinted for 2K and then gave up and threw away the baton. Other companies picked what they ditched and profit now. Deeply irritating.