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Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#21

Post by netcan »

netcan wrote: post #18

Measuring 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 becaus…

On second thought: maybe the right metric should be 'Daily Tinder Searches' - DTS.

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#22

Post by serf »

zedr wrote: post #5

At 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.

one of the nice things about their current position is that the hardware catches a lot of the blame for the overall experience. People expect next to nothing from these phones due to their price, and when they work better than was ever expected it looks favorable.

it may be in the interest of firefox-os to compete with the low-end market for the time being, where expectations are low, while polishing the OS for release on a high-end phone when high-end features are thought out.

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#23

Post by netcan »

izacus wrote: post #20
netcan wrote: post #18

Measuring 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 becaus…

Just be sure to not mistake audience to your site with general worlds population.

First, 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.

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#24

Post by agumonkey »

tmilard wrote: post #7

Personnally, I would also love to have a second phone like this one. Cheap, simple, just to "phone&browse". No apps. I live in France

I recently got a KitKat phone, and felt instantaneously trapped in Google Play land (no improvement over Apple Appstore I guess), not a good feeling. A 'web' based OS would be a nice thing to try.

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#25

Post by oe »

Touche wrote: post #15
danohuiginn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What 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.

> What is the advantage of releasing a high-end phone? Developers use high end phones.

Developers 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.

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#26

Post by pjmlp »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #19
zedr wrote: post #5

At 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.

Firefox OS has a huge advantage when running on low-memory phones. The most memory intensive thing typically run on a low-end phone is the web browser. (Or an app that wraps a browser, like Facebook). So the ability to run a web browser is the limiting factor. Every other OS has to have enough memory to run a GUI + a browser. Since Firefox OS uses the browser for its GUI, it theoretically can run smoother in 128MB or…

Ever heard of Series30, Series40 and Symbian mobiles?

Native apps + browser, best of both worlds.

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#27

Post by SimeVidas »

rjaco31 wrote: post #16

What 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.cdiscount.com/telephonie/telephone-mobile/zte-ope... http://www.rueducommerce.fr/Telephonie/Smartphone/Smartphone... http://www.webdistrib.com/cat/Smartphone-ZTE-Open-C-Night-Bl... http://www.ldlc.com/telephonie-gps/telephonie-portable/mobil..…

The 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.

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#28

Post by pjmlp »

In 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.

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#29

Post by josefresco »

netcan wrote: post #18

Measuring 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 becaus…

Speaking 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.

Re: Firefox OS Shows Continued Global Growth

#30

Post by regularfry »

gambiting wrote: post #11
tmilard wrote: post #7

Personnally, I would also love to have a second phone like this one. Cheap, simple, just to "phone&browse". No apps. I live in France

Not 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.

You 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.

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