6 ms·

Firefox OS is a great idea, and if it was 2010 it would probably stand a good chance at succeeding with the correct launch strategy. But its not 2010. This wee

Firefox OS is a great idea, and if it was 2010 it would probably stand a good chance at succeeding with the correct launch strategy. But its not 2010. This weekend I had a chance to play with a Jolla smartphone. Hardware wise it pretty good, and had some really good ideas, but the software was half baked. While in time both Jolla and Firefox OS could become great products, but time ran out a while back. You now have to come to market with all the pieces (and then some). You can't adopt the "build it and they will come mantra" because unless you can give users a compelling reason to switch without losing functionality they won't come. The hardware wars are long gone. The app wars ended a few years back. We are now in the ecosystem wars and Mozilla (and Jolla) appear to have no answers for this (or have answers "coming soon"). The sad fact is that from here on out it's iOS and Android in a tussle neither can win, and unless the phone market resets itself like it did in 2007 there is very little anybody else can do.

onion2k 12y ago
There are a lot more people who can write a web app than a mobile app, by a factor of 10 at least. Give them a platform where it's trivial to make an app (easier than, say, Cordova/PhoneGap), and make it free, and you could easily disrupt the mobile market to a small degree. If FirefoxOS is a success the next challenge will come from the fact that iOS and Android could easily have HTML5 apps too with a native WebviewUI 'player' app, and if FirefoxOS gets any traction their respective developers will add that functionality quickly. Hopefully, for consumers and developers alike, they'd all have compatible APIs so mobile apps would be truly cross-platform, but that's not very likely.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  I would believe that if Web OS, Windows Phone HTML apps, Tizen, Blackberry, ChromeOS didn't already prove users and developers alike don't care.
- spiralpolitik 12y ago
  At this point "a small degree" won't amount to anything. Look at how much money Microsoft have had to burn through to get the few percentage points they've managed to amass. And they still can't get developers onto their ecosystem despite the bribes they've thrown out. It's go big or go home time and Mozilla simply don't have the resources to do it.
pjc50 12y ago
Is there perhaps a market for Firefox OS among the few who care about privacy more than app availability? Or are they all happy using Cyanogen? (Obviously it would be great if OSs were properly decoupled from hardware like in the old PC days before UEFI, but I can't see any way of getting back there other than a very long political slog. Title II gives a small amount of hope for that.)

onion2k 12y ago

There are a lot more people who can write a web app than a mobile app, by a factor of 10 at least. Give them a platform where it's trivial to make an app (easier than, say, Cordova/PhoneGap), and make it free, and you could easily disrupt the mobile market to a small degree. If FirefoxOS is a success the next challenge will come from the fact that iOS and Android could easily have HTML5 apps too with a native WebviewUI 'player' app, and if FirefoxOS gets any traction their respective developers will add that functionality quickly. Hopefully, for consumers and developers alike, they'd all have compatible APIs so mobile apps would be truly cross-platform, but that's not very likely.

pjmlp 12y ago
I would believe that if Web OS, Windows Phone HTML apps, Tizen, Blackberry, ChromeOS didn't already prove users and developers alike don't care.
spiralpolitik 12y ago
At this point "a small degree" won't amount to anything. Look at how much money Microsoft have had to burn through to get the few percentage points they've managed to amass. And they still can't get developers onto their ecosystem despite the bribes they've thrown out. It's go big or go home time and Mozilla simply don't have the resources to do it.

pjc50 12y ago

Is there perhaps a market for Firefox OS among the few who care about privacy more than app availability? Or are they all happy using Cyanogen? (Obviously it would be great if OSs were properly decoupled from hardware like in the old PC days before UEFI, but I can't see any way of getting back there other than a very long political slog. Title II gives a small amount of hope for that.)