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> FirefoxOS was developed at Mozilla from 2011 to 2016, before any cut back It absorbed resources and focus, which resulted in the browser stalling development

by toyg 3y ago

> FirefoxOS was developed at Mozilla from 2011 to 2016, before any cut back It absorbed resources and focus, which resulted in the browser stalling development, which resulted in shrinking marketshare, which resulted in less money from the search deals, which resulted in the ongoing job losses. > you have to understand that [hard realities of the mobile market that everyone knows already] I don't disagree, but: none of that was new or unexpected when going in. That's why a lot of people thought FFOS was hopeless: because breaking the mobile duopoly is so hard, by then it had already claimed a giant (Nokia) and seriously humbled another (Microsoft). The play for the "developing market" and low-end devices was hopeless and misguided. We had just seen Nokia dying while trying to hang on that same market... There was a lot of wishful thinking in all the strategic moves, and unsurprisingly they didn't pan out.

fabrice_d 3y ago
> It absorbed resources and focus, which resulted in the browser stalling development, which resulted in shrinking marketshare, which resulted in less money from the search deals, which resulted in the ongoing job losses. That's history revision. The browser development didn't stall because of FirefoxOS, it was slow for other reasons (look at the leadership team changes when the Quantum started). Please remember that FxOS started in 2011. At the time WindowsPhone was quite new (first release in 2010), Samsung was pushing Tizen and Android was not nearly as dominant. Context matter. Mozilla already knew that Firefox would not be the default browser on Android (Google waited for Chrome to be ready to replace the crappy default one that was subpar compared to Firefox) so owning a platform was a logical step. It would still be better these days.
toast0 3y ago
> The play for the "developing market" and low-end devices was hopeless and misguided. I don't think that's right. The developing and low-end devices are probably the only plausible route into the phone market. Especially during the time period that FirefoxOS was active, there was a tremendous opportunity for a phone that cost very little and was widely available. I don't know that FirefoxOS could have really addressed that market, given their software stack, but the market was there. Wikipedia claims 23 million KaiOS devices were produced in Q1 2018; given that KaiOS is a fork of FirefoxOS, I think that's a demonstration that the targeting was fine. 23 million devices is a small chunk of the mobile market, but it's still a lot of devices. Microsoft was making significant gains in market share with WP7 and WP8 by having devices that were low cost and worked much better than similar cost Androids. In the US, you could go out and get a $60 wp7 device or a $100 wp8 device when they were new and have a much more usable phone than a $150 Android. and an iPhone was like $400-$500 at the time. Microsoft had some high end wp7 and wp8 devices too, but not many people bought them, because high end iPhones and Androids worked well, and at that price point you're looking for different things. WM10 had promise and interesting features (Continuum might have been pretty cool, especially if Intel hadn't dropped development of x86 phones days before the Continuum public demo), but WM10 didn't run well on low end phones, so there were no low end WM10 phones, and user growth evaporated. (It doesn't help that WM10 included at least the 3rd new framework for windows phones in 3 generations, and called this one 'universal', which meant it only ran on the OS which had the least number of phones for its whole lifetime....)
- toyg 3y ago
  > Microsoft was making significant gains in market share [...] Microsoft had some high end wp7 and wp8 devices too, but not many people bought them And that's the problem: the phone market is fundamentally aspirational, phones are status-symbols, it's the high-end that directs the market. Yes, you can have a number of bottom-feeders at the cheap end, but they are fundamentally irrelevant: (almost) nobody buys a KaiOS device because of KaiOS, they buy a cheap phone that will run whatever OS ships with it. And the same was happening for Microsoft: people bought MS phones because they were cheap, and then chucked them away as soon as they could afford a flagship Android or iPhone. If you cannot produce a flagship phone that people actually want to buy for the OS, for the experience, rather than for the price, you're having no impact whatsoever on the direction of the market, regardless of numbers. Nokia was still shipping hundreds of millions on cheap featurephones when it died on its ass.
  - toast0 3y ago
    I mean, maybe you both high end and low end, so there's something to aspire to, but on a global market, the majority of phones sold aren't flagships. And a new entrant isn't going to be able to sell a flagship phone with no apps; and you're not going to get apps without at least expected sales. Addressing the bottom of the market allows you to get sales to justify app development, and that allows you to make sales for high end phones plausible. I don't use iOS devices, but I understand the experience is generally considered to be pleasant. The Android is really not that great; there's definitely room for someone to build something with UI that's not made of molasses; but it's going to be a real uphill slog to get it into the marketplace, and it's going to have to be driven by market share on the low end that goes upmarket over time.
    - toyg 3y ago
      > a new entrant isn't going to be able to sell a flagship phone with no apps; and you're not going to get apps without at least expected sales. That's where you need the commercial talent to go out and make deals, build relationships, get mindshare before you even go to market. To do that, you need sexy software, a sexy experience that makes a difference, and a lot of money. A clunky OS targeting the low end will never be sexy, and you'll never convince developers to work on it "for the good of the web" or some other non-financial reason. > The Android is really not that great; there's definitely room for someone to build something with UI that's not made of molasses But the thing is, there really isn't. Android is actually pretty good, on flagship phones it works as well as iOS. There just isn't a massive quality gap to exploit. One needs a value proposition that changes the game, because you're not going anywhere with progressive enhancements. > it's going to have to be driven by market share on the low end that goes upmarket over time. Nobody has ever done that in post-2007 mobile. Nobody. Every player that saw the low-end as strategic, went there to die. As Microsoft demonstrated, it's a road to nowhere. You need to make a splash at the top end, make headlines, make people want it, or you'll never move the needle.

by toyg 3y ago

fabrice_d 3y ago

> It absorbed resources and focus, which resulted in the browser stalling development, which resulted in shrinking marketshare, which resulted in less money from the search deals, which resulted in the ongoing job losses. That's history revision. The browser development didn't stall because of FirefoxOS, it was slow for other reasons (look at the leadership team changes when the Quantum started). Please remember that FxOS started in 2011. At the time WindowsPhone was quite new (first release in 2010), Samsung was pushing Tizen and Android was not nearly as dominant. Context matter. Mozilla already knew that Firefox would not be the default browser on Android (Google waited for Chrome to be ready to replace the crappy default one that was subpar compared to Firefox) so owning a platform was a logical step. It would still be better these days.

toast0 3y ago

> The play for the "developing market" and low-end devices was hopeless and misguided. I don't think that's right. The developing and low-end devices are probably the only plausible route into the phone market. Especially during the time period that FirefoxOS was active, there was a tremendous opportunity for a phone that cost very little and was widely available. I don't know that FirefoxOS could have really addressed that market, given their software stack, but the market was there. Wikipedia claims 23 million KaiOS devices were produced in Q1 2018; given that KaiOS is a fork of FirefoxOS, I think that's a demonstration that the targeting was fine. 23 million devices is a small chunk of the mobile market, but it's still a lot of devices. Microsoft was making significant gains in market share with WP7 and WP8 by having devices that were low cost and worked much better than similar cost Androids. In the US, you could go out and get a $60 wp7 device or a $100 wp8 device when they were new and have a much more usable phone than a $150 Android. and an iPhone was like $400-$500 at the time. Microsoft had some high end wp7 and wp8 devices too, but not many people bought them, because high end iPhones and Androids worked well, and at that price point you're looking for different things. WM10 had promise and interesting features (Continuum might have been pretty cool, especially if Intel hadn't dropped development of x86 phones days before the Continuum public demo), but WM10 didn't run well on low end phones, so there were no low end WM10 phones, and user growth evaporated. (It doesn't help that WM10 included at least the 3rd new framework for windows phones in 3 generations, and called this one 'universal', which meant it only ran on the OS which had the least number of phones for its whole lifetime....)

toyg 3y ago
> Microsoft was making significant gains in market share [...] Microsoft had some high end wp7 and wp8 devices too, but not many people bought them And that's the problem: the phone market is fundamentally aspirational, phones are status-symbols, it's the high-end that directs the market. Yes, you can have a number of bottom-feeders at the cheap end, but they are fundamentally irrelevant: (almost) nobody buys a KaiOS device because of KaiOS, they buy a cheap phone that will run whatever OS ships with it. And the same was happening for Microsoft: people bought MS phones because they were cheap, and then chucked them away as soon as they could afford a flagship Android or iPhone. If you cannot produce a flagship phone that people actually want to buy for the OS, for the experience, rather than for the price, you're having no impact whatsoever on the direction of the market, regardless of numbers. Nokia was still shipping hundreds of millions on cheap featurephones when it died on its ass.
- toast0 3y ago
  I mean, maybe you both high end and low end, so there's something to aspire to, but on a global market, the majority of phones sold aren't flagships. And a new entrant isn't going to be able to sell a flagship phone with no apps; and you're not going to get apps without at least expected sales. Addressing the bottom of the market allows you to get sales to justify app development, and that allows you to make sales for high end phones plausible. I don't use iOS devices, but I understand the experience is generally considered to be pleasant. The Android is really not that great; there's definitely room for someone to build something with UI that's not made of molasses; but it's going to be a real uphill slog to get it into the marketplace, and it's going to have to be driven by market share on the low end that goes upmarket over time.
  - toyg 3y ago
    > a new entrant isn't going to be able to sell a flagship phone with no apps; and you're not going to get apps without at least expected sales. That's where you need the commercial talent to go out and make deals, build relationships, get mindshare before you even go to market. To do that, you need sexy software, a sexy experience that makes a difference, and a lot of money. A clunky OS targeting the low end will never be sexy, and you'll never convince developers to work on it "for the good of the web" or some other non-financial reason. > The Android is really not that great; there's definitely room for someone to build something with UI that's not made of molasses But the thing is, there really isn't. Android is actually pretty good, on flagship phones it works as well as iOS. There just isn't a massive quality gap to exploit. One needs a value proposition that changes the game, because you're not going anywhere with progressive enhancements. > it's going to have to be driven by market share on the low end that goes upmarket over time. Nobody has ever done that in post-2007 mobile. Nobody. Every player that saw the low-end as strategic, went there to die. As Microsoft demonstrated, it's a road to nowhere. You need to make a splash at the top end, make headlines, make people want it, or you'll never move the needle.