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Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth
- Yoric 12y agoWhy surprising? It fills a very existing need. Also note that, while the press has nicknamed it $25, it's actually $33.
- nimrody 12y agoThis is probably the price with contract (i.e., it's subsidized by the carrier and the true cost is higher)
- milankragujevic 12y agoNope. It's actually $33, also in developing countries nobody pays more than $0.01 for a phone on contract.
- gambiting 12y agoI'm from a developed country and I don't know anyone who pays for a phone on top of the contract price. It baffles me how in US people get a $50/month contract + they have to pay $200 for the phone. Crazy.
- roel_v 12y agoHuh? What country are you from then? Every country I know a bit about in this regards (which covers a sizable part of Europe) has 'get a cheaper contract but still get a more expensive phone by paying up front for a part of it' options.
- gambiting 12y agoAlright, I wasn't entirely clear - yes, you can get a cheaper contract and pay a bit upfront for the phone - but I don't know literally anyone who does that. At least in the UK since you can get pretty much any phone model for 30-35 pounds a month people just do that rather than get a 20 pounds/month contract and pay anything upfront for the phone.
- jonknee 12y agoBecause the phones are $600? At $50/mo it would take an entire year to pay for just the phone before any revenue could be used for actual operator business.
- gambiting 12y agoYeah. That's exactly how it works. Me and all my friends have top-models of different brands, and I don't know a single person who paid anything upfront. HTC One here - 30 pounds a month contract. Iphone 5S - 35 pounds a month contract. LG G3 - 28 pounds a month. All of these prices roughly translate into $50/month - so why would you pay anything upfront?? And just because a phone costs $600 on the retail market don't assume that operators pay anywhere near that.
- justincormack 12y agoEveryone I know just buys phones outright and is on giffgaff at around £12 a month... Different demographics I guess.
- nimrody 12y agoWhat do you do when you want to break the contract? I.e., after 6 months you decide to switch carrier? Now what?
- gambiting 12y agoOn O2 you just pay off the phone, and then break the contract whenever you want. There is no early termination fee.
- pjc50 12y agoJust to drive gambiting's point home, here's EE's phone selection: http://shop.ee.co.uk/mobile-phones/pay-monthly/gallery http://shop.ee.co.uk/mobile-phones/pay-monthly/gallery The nearest to the $200 upfront is the £150 upfront for the "iPhone 6 plus 128GB", although that's then about $100 a month. For the very latest top-end phone. All the others have tiny or zero upfront fees.
- milankragujevic 12y agoThey have to pay the smallest possible amount, in my country $0.01 (not in US dollars, of course)
- Istof 12y agothey try to milk it (and it appears to work)... there is always pre-paid-no-contract plans BYOD
- rlpb 12y agoThere was a review the other day at http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/10/testing-a-35-firefox-os-phone-how-bad-could-it-be/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/10/testing-a-35-firefox-... (I think this was from HN). I was interested to see how they defined "growth" in revenue figures. It's disappointing to see that they're only stating launches, rather than sales and return figures, and calling that growth. But perhaps it's too early to get real figures right now.
- valarauca1 12y ago>It's disappointing to see that they're only stating launches, rather than sales and return figures, and calling that growth. Seeing as this is HN, and part of the start up community. I think you've falling out of touch with the modern techno-economical world ;P /s
- Tloewald 12y agoWell, it's out of touch with the techno-channel-stuffing world, but some companies aren't in that. After all, Apple is, despite being gigantic, pretty much worshipped by the startup community, and it is very conservative with its figures.
- szatkus 12y agoI have AOTF with 256MB RAM and I'm not surprised that Cloud FX performance is a disaster.
- happyscrappy 12y agoOuch: The Good •Per-app privacy controls. Block an app from seeing your location, contacts, or a host of other things on your phone. •It's cheap! •No really, have you seen how cheap it is? It's $35. Off contract. That's like, really cheap. The Bad •The software—Firefox OS was a totally inappropriate choice of operating system for this hardware. There are literally zero considerations for the speed and memory of the Cloud FX, and most of the device's really serious problems come from running software on hardware that feels well below the minimum spec. •The software (again). •The keyboard—No multitouch, no auto correct, no copy/paste. Press "Q" and "P" at the same time and the keyboard registers "Y." This ruins e-mail, searching, texting, typing URLs, and lots of other stuff. •The memory—The phone constantly runs out of memory and can't multitask. Critical background features like the alarm and checking e-mail don't work because the phone is always out of memory. •The screen—The viewing angles are terrible, and in landscape the shimmery-ness of the display is headache-inducing. •The storage—There isn't any. •The modem—You get Edge data. No 3G. Don't even ask about 4G. •The camera—Pictures look more like impressionist watercolor paintings rather than scene recreations. •The build quality—Ultra-cheap, ultra-plasticky build quality. •The performance—Performance is really inconsistent, but it ranges from moderately slow to I-think-I-need-to-reboot-this slow. •It can't keep time. There's no battery backup for the time, so if the phone resets or runs out of battery, the time defaults to last century. This silently breaks all apps that use a secure connection. •There's no GPS. •Firefox crashes all the time. The Ugly •Anyone who had this as their first smartphone would swear off smartphones forever.
- robin_reala 12y agoThe title isn’t right. The Intex phone I assume it refers to is an Intex phone, not a Mozilla phone. The actual title should be what the press release title is: ‘Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth’
- zedr 12y agoAt this point, I think Mozilla really needs to: 1) launch a high end phone, capable of competing in specs with the Nexus 5 and the like; 2) release the first Firefox-OS tablet, which would be a prove very valuable to kiosks.
- danohuiginn 12y agoWhat is the advantage of releasing a high-end phone? They've made a sensible strategic choice to target a low-end market -- probably the place where firefox-os has the best chance of competing with Android. Trying to have a high-end flagship would dilute their branding and divert their dev efforts.
- Touche 12y ago> What is the advantage of releasing a high-end phone? Developers use high end phones.
- oe 12y agoDevelopers would be better off trying their apps on a $25 phone. Of course you might want to use a more powerful device for development, but the risk there is that low-end testing and code optimisation is left as a last minute step.
- doublec 12y agoFxOS tablets already exist [1]. The Flame and ZTE Open C are higher end devices than the device talked about in the OP. Not quite Nexus 5 level (more Nexus S I think?) but are mid-range. I'd like to see more pushing the envelope of what HTML applications on mobile devices are capable of. Currently devices use the Facebook, Mobile and YouTube mobile sites. These don't make great use of HTML APIs. There is little in the way of offline support for example. I'd like to see developers, or Mozilla, provide versions of these applications that are equivalent to native. I don't think there is much missing in the web platform to make this difficult. [1] http://benjaminkerensa.com/2014/05/02/unboxing-first-firefox-os-tablet http://benjaminkerensa.com/2014/05/02/unboxing-first-firefox...
- tmilard 12y agoPersonnally, I would also love to have a second phone like this one. Cheap, simple, just to "phone&browse". No apps. I live in France
- gambiting 12y agoNot to be rude, but what stops you from buying an old android phone/iphone 3GS/any older windows phone? I can almost guarantee that they will be faster for browsing than any of these new ultra-cheap Firefox OS running phones.
- regularfry 12y agoYou might think that, but you've got to be careful not to let old phones update. I've got a Galaxy S2 I use mainly as a wifi hotspot with a data-only sim, and while it used to have a pretty snappy UI, these days it really crawls, almost to the point of being unusable. To be honest I've not looked particularly hard at why this is, but how well a phone runs a browser, for instance, isn't frozen in time when the phone is bought.
- gambiting 12y agoYou are absolutely right, but a phone that is few years old and has 512MB of ram is going to load pages faster than this new $35 firefox OS phone which only has 128MB.
- regularfry 12y agoCould go either way, I reckon. I've got no idea what the relative CPU speeds are, for a start. At some point the newer phone will start to make sense.
- mozmark 12y agoNot letting your phone update maybe isn't a great solution if you care about security at all. Users shouldn't have to choose between 'affordable' and 'currently supported'; I hope Firefox OS can help here.
- Zigurd 12y agoNo actual numbers of users, BUT the number of OEMs, distribution deals, carriers, and regions is impressive. Gaining distribution for handsets can be very complex. If they have managed to figure out how to do this quickly, they've really got something.
- rjaco31 12y agoWhat the fuck? the price of the article is '$25', and all the links they give show a 80€ => $100 tag price... http://www.materiel.net/smartphone/?f[11037]=Firefox+OS http://www.materiel.net/smartphone/?f[11037]=Firefox+OS http://www.cdiscount.com/telephonie/telephone-mobile/zte-open-c-bleu/f-144040207-zteopencbl.html http://www.cdiscount.com/telephonie/telephone-mobile/zte-ope... http://www.rueducommerce.fr/Telephonie/Smartphone/Smartphone-classique/ZTE/4926226-Open-C-bleu.htm http://www.rueducommerce.fr/Telephonie/Smartphone/Smartphone... http://www.webdistrib.com/cat/Smartphone-ZTE-Open-C-Night-Blue-Firefox-OS-__p_925735.html http://www.webdistrib.com/cat/Smartphone-ZTE-Open-C-Night-Bl... http://www.ldlc.com/telephonie-gps/telephonie-portable/mobile-smartphone/c4416/+fv403-11718.html http://www.ldlc.com/telephonie-gps/telephonie-portable/mobil...
- SimeVidas 12y agoThe cheapest devices ($25 are $35) are sold exclusively in India and similar low-income countries, AFAIK. In the western world, you can only get Alcatel, ZTE, etc.
- icebraining 12y agoThey're being sold on eBay as well (by resellers), but never bellow $65. I wonder who's buying them.
- listic 12y agoPeople in other countries who want to check out these phones.
- muyuu 12y agoIs is the same as the ZTE Open C Firefox Phone? because I tried it and it's pitiful. IIRC it's £60 in the UK. Don't bother with that phone, it's useless.
- srcmap 12y agoForm the point of view of the folks who never use a smart phone before, this $35 phone is probably very good. Just as win3.1 might be very good for someone who only use DOS before.
- netcan 12y agoMeasuring whether or not a device is gaining market share is tricky. I remember iphone launching and weeks later, every website with substantial traffic had a noticeable number of visits from an iphone. Same with ipad. At the start, there were more nokia n95s, blackberry's and other pre-iphone smartphones in the market. There were even more being sold as iphones were supply limited. But, none of these mattered because if you looked at it from a website's perspective, there were no visits. Sales don't matter. There's something similar with ChromeOS. People like buying them and maybe owning them. They're cheap and novel and the idea is appealing. But, how many visits to your site come from a chromebook? Usually it's below the attention threshold. I wonder if Firefox OS will be similar. IE, people could buy a $25 phone on a lark, to house a rarely used SIM or similar but not use it as their primary phone. This isn't a problem exactly, but it might make it hard to gauge how important the platform is at any given time.
- izacus 12y agoJust be sure to not mistake audience to your site with general worlds population.
- netcan 12y agoFirst, there's a lot of aggregated data available online. Second, I think the traffic stats for chromeOS are so small right now that it probably wouldn't make it out of the 'other' bucket on most sites that don't specifically target the OS as an audience. Who is the ChromeOS audience anyway? My perseption is that it's pretty general: Students, 2nd computers, postmen, etc. A lot of tech-savy people seem to buy them as an extra machine or just for fun.
- netcan 12y agoOn second thought: maybe the right metric should be 'Daily Tinder Searches' - DTS.
- josefresco 12y agoSpeaking of usage rates for Chrome OS - We monitor traffic for many small business websites (across a diverse range of non-technical sectors) and typically see Chrome OS rank behind Linux (but slightly ahead or on par with Windows Phone/Blackberry) within our Google Analytics reporting. I do wonder if within the "education" industry (and of course across social media sites) Chrome OS usage is much higher as students are the typical customer.
- pjmlp 12y agoIn developing countries you can get feature phones that are more powerful, offer real native apps, a web browser and cost a similar price. In other countries, Android and Windows Phone devices are already in the 100€ range. Specially if one is not looking to buy the very latest models. Personally, I think it would be better to focus resources elsewhere.
- CmonDev 12y agoThat is thousands of proper native apps, that are available today.
- dscrd 12y agoIs there some technical detail in Firefox OS that makes it a good choice for cheap phones? I've come to understand that it's not particularly lightweight, but am I wrong?
- regularfry 12y agoMaybe not a technical detail per se, but as far as I can tell they're gambling on not having to pay the usual Android patent license costs to the likes of Microsoft.
- asadotzler 12y agoFirefox OS can run in 128MB or RAM. It runs better in 256MB RAM. Android requires 512MB RAM.
- another 12y agoWe can argue about "require", but Android phones exist at the same price point that also operate with only 128 MB of RAM, e.g.: http://www.amazon.in/Jivi-JSP-20-Black/dp/B00NOV3NQU http://www.amazon.in/Jivi-JSP-20-Black/dp/B00NOV3NQU (Android phones with 256 MB of RAM are quite common.)
- Yoric 12y agoI admit I haven't searched very hard, but I am yet to see a 128 Mb Android phone that I would consider usable.
- fiatjaf 12y agoGo Firefox OS! Save the world from the "apps"!
- mikemajzoub 12y agoI am SO excited about the possibilities Firefox OS provides. I do realize it's in early stages now, and there are many hurdles for the Mozilla team to overcome for it to become a real player in the market, but I'm crossing my fingers. Specifically, I can't wait to see what local developers in developing countries create to improve the lives of people within their communities and societies. With the barrier to entry lower to develop these HTML5 apps (not only concerning the tech stack, but also regarding the cost to buy hardware), I expect the app development community will gain valuable members with more diverse backgrounds and life experiences. From what I observe in myself and in those around me, I think we are best at addressing challenges we have been personally affected by. Therefore, I think great potential rests in empowering people from all around the world, living in incredibly diverse communities, to create local solutions to local problems. Mozilla team - keep it up, my friends. I'm rooting for you!
- undershirt 12y agoReally well put, thanks for sharing.
- thegeomaster 12y ago>I can't wait to see what local developers in developing countries create to improve the lives of people within their communities and societies. I can't resist the urge to plug my project here. It failed as a Show HN, but now it's very relevant: https://github.com/geomaster/beoprevoz https://github.com/geomaster/beoprevoz. In short, it's a neat public transport FxOS app, specific to Belgrade, Serbia (but in theory and by design pluggable and easy to generalize to arbitrary areas), that boasts some cool features, such as Google Places/Google Maps integration, local data to make it independent of Internet access, an optimized client-side routing algorithm for shortest-path calculation, among others. Check it out, all feedback welcome! (It's even multilingual :)
- milankragujevic 12y agoHey geomaster! Long time no see... You probably know who I am... That's a great app, mine (Wi-Fi password search) failed since Mozilla didn't want to approve it due to it sending location data to the server, so in the end it never even had the chance to enter the Telenor competition. Congrats on the app and the prizes.
- knocte 12y agoCan it run Android apps?
- icebraining 12y agohttp://www.appsurfer.com/ http://www.appsurfer.com/
- aikah 12y agoIt only "runs" webpages.
- StanAngeloff 12y agoSo true, even marketplace apps are just shims around web pages. I have been using Firefox OS for about 2 months and this is one of my biggest complaints. Apps are just websites, no more, no less.
- fabrice_d 12y agoSearch for ":packaged" in the marketplace to find apps that are not shims around web pages. But in general, there's nothing wrong with good web pages if they provide offline support... What is still frustrating is that discovering those good ones is a pain.
- darklajid 12y agoI disagree for a couple of things, unfortunately. For 'apps' I might (mostly) agree, but some apps provide services. And that experience is quite bad so far. Think IM (and even the email client is not there yet => IDLE/Notifications/Server Side Search)
- whoisthemachine 12y agoI think the idea of an HTML5 runtime that integrates well with an OS is a great and powerful concept. However I'm not certain about an entire OS being restricted to that runtime - at the end of day, tricky situations arise and in those instances developers need options.
- kumarm 12y agoFirefox OS continues to disappoint me (As it did when I bought first Firefox mobile a year back). A Blog post on Growth with absolutely no numbers is disingenuous (Even if you are open source company). I did a little investigation since Firefox Blogpost provided where the devices are available (For India at least): 1. ALCATEL ONETOUCH: Available on Flipkart.com . Exactly one person rated. Compare them with high priced Alcatel OneTouch devices that use Android: http://www.flipkart.com/search?q=ALCATEL+ONETOUCH&as=off&as-show=on&otracker=start#jumpTo=409|20 http://www.flipkart.com/search?q=ALCATEL+ONETOUCH&as=off&as-... 2. Spice Fire One Mi available on Snapdeal. 60 People rated and 14 people wrote reviews. Comparing this with other products I would think total sales are few thousands for the device. http://www.snapdeal.com/product/spice-fire-one-mifx1/531126742#bcrumbSearch:Spice%20Fire%20One%20Mi http://www.snapdeal.com/product/spice-fire-one-mifx1/5311267... 3. Cloud FX on Snapdeal and Intex Technologies channels. Most Likely is the device with biggest sales in India for firefox os. 3682 Ratings and 880 Reviews. 2.75 rating with 1 Star rating out numbering any other. http://www.snapdeal.com/product/intex-cloud-fx/1356760619#bcrumbSearch:|bcrumbLabelId:175 http://www.snapdeal.com/product/intex-cloud-fx/1356760619#bc... Worst of all none of the Phones are 25$. They are atleast $30+. 99% of times when someone doesn't provide numbers and claim growth, they are trying to hide a failure. Disappointed that Mozilla is not being open.
- listic 12y agoCalling Firefox OS "the only truly open mobile operating system" is misleading. AFAIK, it still includes proprietary bootloader and device drivers. So, if I am buying Open C http://www.ebay.com/itm/Unlocked-ZTE-OPEN-C-Firefox-OS-Android-4-4-KitKat-3G-Smartphone-AT-T-T-Mobile-US-/360929183586?pt=Cell_Phones http://www.ebay.com/itm/Unlocked-ZTE-OPEN-C-Firefox-OS-Andro... with Android I still have to modify bootloader to install Firefox OS and I cannot compile and install a new version of Firefox OS myself, if ZTE won't release updates (judging by their previous begaviour, they won't) I understand that Mozilla is a non-profit with a budget uncomparable to Apple or Google. I like for Firefox OS to succeed, I really do; but wishful thinking is a wrong way to do it. Firefox OS is not as open as I would like it or what I would call "truly open".
- darklajid 12y agoBuy a Flame and have a better device that you can flash every night if you wish. Building is a single command, flashing a simple second one. Works fine for me. (Sure, the drivers are still binary blobs, but .. otherwise it's as open as is feasible, I guess)
- LowDog 12y agoI have an Open C and I recently manually updated the phone from 1.3 to 2.1. You can most definitely compile and install a new version of Firefox OS yourself regardless of what ZTE chooses to do. The only catch is that you need root access, and this is not enabled on the Open C by default, but ZTE provides a tool for rooting your phone with a single button press. My understanding is that all aspects of the OS under the control of Mozilla are completely open, but manufacturers like ZTE include proprietary components and of course their hardware isn't 100% open, but Mozilla isn't responsible for that. Mozilla certainly needs to find other partners however, because my experiences with ZTE have been pretty poor thus far, and I've read a lot of negative things about Alcatel's Firefox OS devices as well. As an aside, Mozilla needs to start targeting higher end devices since I believe that hardware experience will largely factor into the success of the OS, and the current official Firefox OS devices are pretty awful. I've also been following bugs concerning core features for YEARS now, and Mozilla has yet to address any of these. 2.1 has some improvements over 1.3 for sure, but it's missing very basic functionality like some group messaging features and a calendar application that's actually useful. A lot of the noticeable changes from 1.3 to 2.1 are purely cosmetic, and it's incredibly frustrating to see essential features get completely overlooked time and time again. The marketplace is also starting to seem completely devoid of useful applications - a lot of them are very low quality, some of them are simply shortcuts to the mobile versions of websites, and games seem to make up the majority of the applications.
- milankragujevic 12y agoI actually dislike Firefox OS, not because of the lack of apps or the architecture (code a new launcher in hours, without having to learn Java), but simply it was horrendously slow. I had the Geeksphone Keon, as part of the Firefox OS challange from my local mobile carrier, Telenor. I'm ignoring the battery, since this was a developer phone, but it shipped with a corrupted OS that didn't show any icons and I had to upgrade it to the latest version (stable, I might add), and then apps would close, it was really laggy, camera rarely worked, the music player also rarely worked properly, and the whole phone just reeked of unfinished software... The phone has long since died (corrupted itself beyond repair), and I'm unsure how the new Firefox OS works (the simulator doesn't simulate the device itself, so it's not a good way to test the OS) but if it's the same... Nope.
- _random_ 12y agoDid you expect anything else from JS and HTML5? I mean it's an OS, not an interactive document.