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FxOS failed commercially because it tried to be a "me too" product, with the same distribution strategy as Android that relies a lot on carriers. For that to wo
by fabrice_d 3y ago
FxOS failed commercially because it tried to be a "me too" product, with the same distribution strategy as Android that relies a lot on carriers. For that to work you need to get support from key apps in the carriers markets, and FxOS never managed to get Whatsapp on board.
KaiOS got Whatsapp support thanks to shipping in India with a single carrier (Jio) that has a very large user base. Deployment in the rest of the world has been a struggle and the company is not in great shape.
All that to say that Mozilla could have kept the lights on for a couple more years and get access to large markets. Hard to predict what would have happened but we certainly would have more diversity in the OS space.
- ethbr1 3y agoThe only path to FirefoxOS success would have been if someone like Samsung hitched their wagon to it. Which would have been because they thought they could make more money using it than Android. Which probably wouldn't have bode well for user-friendly changes to the base image. Android's value prop to manufacturers was "Was to sell a lot of mobile phones, but not have to pay for most of the development? And get a working Maps solution? Here you go." Which Google could afford to torch money on.
- fabrice_d 3y agoI think you're wrong but we'll never know :) What is true is that some of the interest from carriers for alternative OSes was indeed that they didn't like to be handcuffed to Android and iOS.
- ethbr1 3y agoAre we using carrier and manufacturer differently? And I'd imagine carriers don't, as they'd no doubt love to go back to the feature-phone days, but they're all (individually) too weak to do anything about it. Only aggregated can they offer the resources to support an alternative.