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Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

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Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#71

Post by nextos »

lewisl9029 wrote: post #36
gkoberger wrote: post #9

Firefox 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…

Completely agree that they should turn their focus towards solving privacy and identity management. I'm hoping that this might mean they can direct some resources towards Persona development again. Or at least experiment with something new in this area.

I really agree on this. They should focus on a browser that respects privacy and email that respects privacy (perhaps by resuming Thunderbird development).

On top of that, I'd argue IM + video/audio chat that respects privacy is something that desperately needs better solutions.

I'd push software forward, and then innovate on protocols. Peer to peer might be the only way to achieve true privacy.

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#72

Post by wvenable »

sremani wrote: post #52
frik wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to IDC the Worldwide Smartphone Market in 2015: Android ... 81.2% iOS ... 15.8% Windows Phone ... 2.2% Others ... 0.8% Worldwide Smartphone Forecast by OS for 2019: Android ... 82.6% iOS ... 14.1% Windows Phone ... 2.3% Others ... 0.9% Source: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS40664915 @downvoter: it's a forcast by the well known IDC, also the current market share (2015) is interesting on its ow…

Will Windows Phone/ Windows Mobile be around 2019, as a die-hard WP user, I hope so. I just do not like those icon based OSes.

Windows Phone, if it survives, will eventually become very much like those icon based OSes.

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#73

Post by Mikeb85 »

Hate to say it, but good. Firefox OS was going in a backwards direction. The UI was designed for low-res screens, and it ran mostly on hardware barely better than the iPhone 1, except with JS.

Something like this could have been the future if Webassembly was ready for prime time - you could have 'native' apps all running on top on Firefox, on top of the Android/CM base.

Anyhow, hopefully Mozilla refocuses their efforts on Firefox, Rust and Webassembly, and regain relevance.

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#74

Post by S4M »

gedrap wrote: post #25
mootothemax wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh yeah, I've read about them targeting some specific countries (Spain, Brazil, Poland, etc). So it might be that the parent commentator lives elsewhere and didn't get targeted :)

I live in Spain, but never saw someone using a Firefox OS phone there.

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#75

Post by Raed667 »

rimantas wrote: post #68
Raed667 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IoT lacks consistant "full-stack" standards. Someone as big as Mozilla could make things less messier by adopting standards on some/all layers of IoT. This is an area worth exploring "for the greater good".

Foe me IoT lacks the problem that needs solving. And we do know what happens to the solutions without the problem.

I'll be graduating in a few months and I study embedded/IoT. And as someone who spent the last 2 years digging in the corners of IoT, I agree that IoT can seem to be over-engineering problems that don't exist.

But the market is there, and it is huge. (mainly industrial, energy & transport applications)

IoT now is like the early personal computers, they were too expensive and almost no one knew why they needed them.

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#76

Post by blinkingled »

bad_user wrote: post #35
Apocryphon wrote: post #6

Guess it's up to Canonical to make Ubuntu Touch a viable open source smartphone OS - are there even devices running it that are being sold in the U.S.? Did not expect that Sailfish OS would outlive Firefox OS.

As much as I respect Mozilla, when the user experience is worse than a cheap Android 1.6, you should know you've got a problem. It's cool that they tried, but on one hand if you want an open-source OS it makes much more sense to fork Android, and yes I believe Ubuntu is doomed as well. And for Mozilla this may mean more resources spent into Firefox for Android, a mobile browser that is turning out to be the browser o…

> And for Mozilla this may mean more resources spent into Firefox for Android, a mobile browser that is turning out to be the browser of choice for power users due to its extensions, an awesome browser that could use some love from Mozilla as it's lagging behind Chrome

Exactly the thing Mozilla should do - focus on Firefox and maybe even continue to invest in making Thunderbird better. There are a lot of reasons why that approach is more likely to succeed.

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#77

Post by MawNicker »

sremani wrote: post #52
frik wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to IDC the Worldwide Smartphone Market in 2015: Android ... 81.2% iOS ... 15.8% Windows Phone ... 2.2% Others ... 0.8% Worldwide Smartphone Forecast by OS for 2019: Android ... 82.6% iOS ... 14.1% Windows Phone ... 2.3% Others ... 0.9% Source: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS40664915 @downvoter: it's a forcast by the well known IDC, also the current market share (2015) is interesting on its ow…

Will Windows Phone/ Windows Mobile be around 2019, as a die-hard WP user, I hope so. I just do not like those icon based OSes.

I suspect the Universal Windows Platform will have a significant impact. Especially the ability to dock your phone with an external display/keyboard/mouse. For a large portion of the market it displaces the need for a second computing device. Microsoft is much further along on this front than both Android and iOS.

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#78

Post by scrollaway »

nextos wrote: post #71
lewisl9029 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree that they should turn their focus towards solving privacy and identity management. I'm hoping that this might mean they can direct some resources towards Persona development again. Or at least experiment with something new in this area.

I really agree on this. They should focus on a browser that respects privacy and email that respects privacy (perhaps by resuming Thunderbird development). On top of that, I'd argue IM + video/audio chat that respects privacy is something that desperately needs better solutions. I'd push software forward, and then innovate on protocols. Peer to peer might be the only way to achieve true privacy.

They're trying something with Firefox Hello. Unfortunately, short of Google open sourcing Hangouts and making it a truly open protocol, I don't see a change happening in the IM space any time soon =/

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#79

Post by raphman »

Apocryphon wrote: post #38
wmf wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try Jolla so your dreams can be crushed twice.

I wonder if Jolla has a higher chance of survival, because it's niche enough to be focused, rather than chasing after a world market. Sailfish OS might outlive Ubuntu Touch.

Jolla is pretty much insolvent at the moment. Does not really look good. http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/20/jolla-running-out-of-runway...

Re: Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

#80

Post by adrusi »

binarymax wrote: post #10
ris wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The IoT space is a mess right now" But is also almost entirely vapour. Seeing this news gave me relief that Mozilla might be pulling their heads out of the clouds chasing fantastical dreams of mobile platforms, but if anything IoT is worse!

IoT is better for R&D now, because its going to happen (if not through a nice clean adoption but rather through sheer force of will). Mobile was already mature with a well entrenched duopoly when FFOS began. IoT is still up for grabs.

IoT is an open opportunity in general, but it doesn't really mesh with what Mozialla has done in the past.

Mozilla very well could change their focus and compete in that space, but a newcomer without any entrenched ideas would be better off. So would a big company with the resources to spin off and fund a relatively independent branch to work in IoT.

Mozilla's only big success has been Firefox. Firefox succeeded because it was competing in a market with only one other player, and that player wasn't innovating at all.

Now the browser market is different and firefox remains popular because of free software nerds, people who like its customization power (something that Mozilla is risking with its recent changes to addons, although it looks like they're treading carefully), and people who switched to it from internet explorer because their kids told them to and don't care to use Chrome.

Mozilla is good at disrupting, including both developing a superior product and getting people to care about it, but they're bad at... basically everything else, business wise. Like any organization they can get better, but doing so would require a level of change that might ultimately just make them less good at what they are good at. It seems that's what they're trying to do, and it seems that's what's happening.

gkoberger's toplevel comment[1] might offer a good opportunity. They started down this path with personas, but then abandoned it when they couldn't make developers care about it. Maybe they've lost their touch.

It pains me to say it, since they've done so much good for the things I care about, but Mozilla's time might be ending.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10698997

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