Sad, but properly to be expected.
Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones
11–20 of 331 posts
Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones
#12Firefox appeared at a time when there was huge potential being stifled by a stagnant monopoly in the space, and people were desperate for something good. It filled a real need, and people loved it. FirefoxOS appeared at a time when there was huge potential being actively being pushed forward and innovated on by the two largest tech companies in the space, and people already had two great options to choose from. It fi…
Outside of hacker news, I haven't heard of Firefox OS even once. They had no marketing to speak of, and you have to complete HARD on marketing to get into that market.
"If you build it they will come" isn't a valid benchmark when there's already two options with massive market share that consumers are more or less happy with.
(Since it's talked about in some replies, I live in the US).
Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones
#13Well, this comes as a huge surprise to no one.
Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones
#14I must say I'm not entirely surprised, though part of me wished they had gone through with it, would of been interesting to have more than just 2 options for a phone. I am reminded of PalmOS though for some reason, similar project if I remember correctly.
Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones
#15Firefox appeared at a time when there was huge potential being stifled by a stagnant monopoly in the space, and people were desperate for something good. It filled a real need, and people loved it. FirefoxOS appeared at a time when there was huge potential being actively being pushed forward and innovated on by the two largest tech companies in the space, and people already had two great options to choose from. It fi…
FirefoxOS was a perfect fit for me on the paper but I never got how to buy one here in France. I'm stucked with Android and I don't like it.
Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones
#16It was interesting to follow this experiment but have to admit it was against the odds since day 1 (and it's especially easy to say so in retrospective).
In terms of regular users, there are tons of dirt cheap chinese no-name android devices that more or less work. For 100 euros, you can get an acceptable Android phone from a major manufacturer (LG, etc). FirefoxOS was competing in a similar price range, however offered much less to the end user. I guess it's fair to say that it didn't deliver any extra value.
When I was using FirefoxOS and poking around the code base, I saw potential in their web-first platform as an introduction to programming. It's much easier to write some basic HTML, CSS and JS than to figure how to do the equivalent in Java for Android, etc.
However, things like ionic or phonegap and reasonably good, and it's hard to compete with them as they produce something fairly acceptable and available to run on the vast majority of the smartphones.
At the end of the day, I really appreciate Mozilla's work on this project. Thanks to all the volunteers who contributed to the project. You are amazing people :)
Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones
#17Firefox appeared at a time when there was huge potential being stifled by a stagnant monopoly in the space, and people were desperate for something good. It filled a real need, and people loved it. FirefoxOS appeared at a time when there was huge potential being actively being pushed forward and innovated on by the two largest tech companies in the space, and people already had two great options to choose from. It fi…
Outside of hacker news, I haven't heard of Firefox OS even once. They had no marketing to speak of, and you have to complete HARD on marketing to get into that market. "If you build it they will come" isn't a valid benchmark when there's already two options with massive market share that consumers are more or less happy with. (Since it's talked about in some replies, I live in the US).
Just as a counterpoint, I regularly saw Firefox os+phone ads on giant billboards in central Warsaw.
If there was to be any market interest, I thought their targeting and marketing efforts like this were pretty spot-on.
Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones
#18Firefox appeared at a time when there was huge potential being stifled by a stagnant monopoly in the space, and people were desperate for something good. It filled a real need, and people loved it. FirefoxOS appeared at a time when there was huge potential being actively being pushed forward and innovated on by the two largest tech companies in the space, and people already had two great options to choose from. It fi…
Outside of hacker news, I haven't heard of Firefox OS even once. They had no marketing to speak of, and you have to complete HARD on marketing to get into that market. "If you build it they will come" isn't a valid benchmark when there's already two options with massive market share that consumers are more or less happy with. (Since it's talked about in some replies, I live in the US).
The last time I checked (about a year ago), their web site said that the project is not ready for public. I bought a firefoxos device in October 2014 which came with FirefoxOS 1.3, and got to agree that it wasn't ready for public.
So that explains the lack of marketing.
Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones
#19Good. I can't remember anyone other than Mozilla actually being excited about Firefox OS. It seemed like a massive sinkhole on the company's part that drew resources away from the development of the browser.
Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones
#20I must say I'm not entirely surprised, though part of me wished they had gone through with it, would of been interesting to have more than just 2 options for a phone. I am reminded of PalmOS though for some reason, similar project if I remember correctly.
Try Jolla so your dreams can be crushed twice.