18 Carriers Sign Up for Firefox OS Phones

Several readers sent word of a Mozilla announcement that 18 carriers have committed to launching phones running Firefox OS. The carriers are primarily from markets in South America and Europe. They include Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, and Sprint. The devices running Firefox OS will be made by LG, ZTE, Huawei, and Alcatel, and all will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset. The new mobile operating system is built to allow HTML5 apps to run directly on the device, a solution Mozilla thinks will give it an edge when playing catch-up to all the software available for Android and iOS devices. "Developers are busy and don't have time to learn a new programming language. We believe that the only remaining eco-system is the web and there are more developers for the web than for any other platform in the world," said Jay Sullivan. According to Reuters, "Mozilla will initially look to compete in so-called 'emerging economies' in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia, where many people still use older phone models and have yet to upgrade to more expensive smartphones that feature touchscreens and high-speed Internet connections."

Comments

"...the only remaining eco-system..."

[kc9jud]

We believe that the only remaining eco-system is the web...

Didn't we already know this? http://xkcd.com/934/

And then...

[gigaherz]

... the quality of the average App will be about as good as the quality of the average website. Not like the existing ones are much better, though.

Re:And then...

[obarthelemy]

good thing averages (like totals) don't matter, and only best-of-breed does, then.

Why is there so much interest in Firefox OS ?

[obarthelemy]

Unless this is baseless hype, but still, I'm seeing a lot about this one OS.

I understand operators not wanting to be beholden to an iOS-Android duopoly, but why pick Firefox as the 3rd player ? Are there no other reasonnably OSS, reasonably good, more proven mobile OSes ? MS, RIM, Bada are proprietary, but what about Meego, Tizen, even Ubuntu ? Why not just fork Android ?

Re:Why is there so much interest in Firefox OS ?

[Atomic Fro]

Why not just fork Android ?

Because then they would still beholden to the Microsoft tax.
Why its Firefox OS, I have no idea. From this article here it sounds like its just doing what WebOS did. And given Mozilla's history, this is exactly something Netscape would do. Thinking like a telecom CEO, I could see them being slightly afraid of Meego as it came from Nokia, and it didn't save them. Firefox is probably something they have heard of and used as opposed to the likes of Ubuntu or Tizen.

Re:Why is there so much interest in Firefox OS ?

[AHuxley]

I would guess freedom over the range of cheap to mid to expensive phones - hardware and software.
With Firefox you have an easy to write for interface and more open hardware.
Add in voice, video and text chat via a browser with the same look and feel over the hardware range - Firefox looks interesting on every device.
Who wants to be trapped in a unique hardware software upgrade cycle per phone, per revision over years of the device been in use?
Having to do battle with some US OS devision telling you the cheap camera is off limits to 3rd party software in the low end phone unless you use their OS... or pay up big time?
Firefox will just sit on hardware vs the hardware reaching up into a per phone 'crafted' OS.

Re:Why is there so much interest in Firefox OS ?

[pesho]

Runs on cheap hardware, the OS is offered for free and somebody else takes care of developing the ecosystem with no strings attached. So if you are a carrier you can offer a "good enough" smart phone for the price of a feature phone. I bet it will be an instant success in developing countries markets and as a first phone for kids in developed countries (hence the Sprint and DT interest in it). The only serious competition it can face is from Android. It will be interesting to see if Google will bother maintaining android codebase that can run on low end phones or just pay to be the default search engine on the Firefox phones and make money on ads and clicks.

Re:Why is there so much interest in Firefox OS ?

[hobarrera]

Meego was (regrettably) abandoned my Nokia, and until Jolla releases anything, it's a dead end. MS has a very poor image, and fails horribly as mobile phone sales. RIM is dying.
Ubuntu doesn't have any hardware yet AFAIK, and I think Bada is semi-abadoned.

An Android fork? By whom? Operators have no interest in investing in an OS, they'd rather pick an existing one.

Re:Seriously.. no.

[shutdown -p now]

No-one is talking about allowing random web pages complete access to the device. They're talking about letting people write apps in HTML5/JS. Still a bad idea, but not for any reasons related to browser security.

Bad news

[MrEricSir]

If you think running HTML on a device is a security hole, I have some bad news for you...

Clearly, it works?

[shutdown -p now]

Developers are busy and don't have time to learn a new programming language. We believe that the only remaining eco-system is the web and there are more developers for the web than for any other platform in the world

You know where I've heard this before, almost word-for-word? It was how HTML5/JS Metro apps were pitched for Win8 on the BUILD conference two years ago.

And before that, it's what RIM has been saying about HTML5 apps for Playbook.

And before that, it was the killer feature of WebOS.

And, as we all know, all of the above are shining examples of a healthy app ecosystem, with thousands of useful, well-written, fast apps in their stores. Right?

Re:Clearly, it works?

[wvmarle]

The basic idea is great (and in a way what Java was purported to be, back when it was first concieved): write once, run anywhere. It runs in the browser, so you don't develop for Android phones or iPhones or Ubuntu phones or whatever. The exact same app runs in any recent browser.

Now of course it's not an ideal world, and there will be differences between browsers (the apparent lack of a reference implementation and still-not-standard-status of HTML5 is a big issue). I also don't think HTML5/JS is up to the task of writing apps as rich as what can be found now in the app stores (even though those apps are still nothing compared to full fledged deskopt apps). And I'm quite positive Mozilla themselves are aware of that - but being primarily a web browser developer that is exactly what they could help fix along the way.

And the difference with other vendors in those respects?

MS is not trusted any more with their proprietary "standards" for browsers, and are prone to ship half-baked solutions withotu clear direction.

RIM has no control over the quality of the web browsers themselves, they depend on third parties.

WebOS was premature. At the time HTML5 was promising, but far from ready, and JS was just slow.

HTML5 and JS have come a long long way in the past few years. JS execution speed has gone up orders of magnitude, not any more slowing down web browsing to a crawl or giving those "Firefox is not responding" messages (later replaced by "non-responsive script" by Firefox) for heavy scripts.

I have no idea whether Firefox can succeed where the others failed. Web technology has improved immensely, making a lot more possible now. Is it good enough? No idea, I don't develop HTML. But dismissing them outright based on past failures, that's not fair to say the least.

liars

[Tom]

the only remaining eco-system is the web

Right. Which is why there is about one million apps for iOS and Android.

The Web is not, never was and never will be the only eco-system. What about the many, many non-web Internet applications? Not everyone uses webmail, and even webmail uses SMTP, not SOAP or REST to deliver its messages. There are calender services, bittorrent, games and thousands of other protocols and services, none of which have anything to do with the web.

There's a lot that is a website these days, granted. But you are a total idiot if you think that nothing that is not a website exists, that HTML/JS is the only programming language left etc.

Heck, Apple even tried this already when they released the original iPhone and told us that Web Apps are where it's at and we don't need native apps.

How about a little more realism and modesty? The web is one eco-system, and a very strong one. Why this obsession with being "the only", this desire for monopoly and dominance? WTF is wrong with being one among many?

Re:liars

[jbeaupre]

I think you parsed that wrong. The qualifier was "remaining." They were being realistic and modest. They realize that that HTML5 apps are the only remaining ecosystem they can influence.

IOS? managed by Apple. Android? Dominated by Google. They could have started a new ecosystem or tried one of the dying ones. But in the end, they saw that HTML5 apps are their only remaining option.

I do not want them to sign

[houghi]

I want the manufacturers to sign. The carriers should do what they do: be carriers. They should not be hardware and software providers.

Re:I do not want them to sign

[hobarrera]

Agreed. I'm actually curious if these phones will be sold clean or if they'll only be available locked-down by operators, since mozilla isn't mentioning this at all.

Microsoft Tax

[tuppe666]

Because then they would still beholden to the Microsoft tax

The Microsoft Tax, is about patents...mainly those that concern interfacing with Windows Computers/Services, Microsoft Bully Boys are going to be knocking on your door whatever OS you choose. Although considering these companies are already heavily involved (and successful) with android its unlikely they are not prepared for Microsoft.

Less is more

[Blaskowicz]

While I'm usually not fond of "web apps", the Firefox OS way of doing web only means you never deal with native apps. Many posts seem to lament this but this lack of a native ecosystem actually is something good for me : I don't want to maintain yet another computer, and be "forced" to carry it 24/7, and I don't want to lock myself into either existing "app" ecosystem. Even if a lock-in to e.g. the Android platform is not a very strong one, it's still a lock-in and has its own complexities (Android 2.x vs 4.x, ARM vs x86, Google app store vs sideloaded apps).

I actually have no smartphone, If I get a Firefox one it would be my first one. And who cares if I check mail or take text notes etc. in some web interface instead of a native application? I've only ever used webmail anyway, since about 2001. I wouldn't have any strong performance requirements (I am not interested in 3D games on a device that doesn't even have suitable controls) and I think low end smartphones will at least have a single core 1.x GHz CPU, be it MIPS, ARM or x86 and those will be enough to deal with the inefficiencies of running a card game on javascript and showing me pictures and maps in a web browser.

addons would make things interesting....

[Anonymous Coward]

adblock, noscript, greasemonkey......... ;p

Well, Gopher

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't for everyone...

Re:Really, Slashdot?

[aztracker1]

I *REALLY* liked WebOS... my Touchpad was the first tablet I had that I actually liked... when HP finally released the source (but no drivers for existing devices) I went with a Nexus 7... You can see the influence on the UI that came from the former Palm/HP guys that Google hired... Not quite as seamless as WebOS but at least the apps and browser are updated.

Updates are different too

[caspy7]

Also providers will only need to worry about writing changes to the Linux underpinnings (Gonk) for their hardware *once* and then leave all the Gecko updates to Mozilla.
Instead of leaving their users behind in features, stability and security because they're not willing to provide the resources to update their Android branch, they can theoretically leave most of the heavy lifting to Mozilla.

Mozilla has truly separated Gonk (Linux) from Gecko and Gaia (the UI) so that updates can be delivered separately.

Re:BUT

[Anonymous Coward]

And how is that different from the Dancing Pwnies native app, that the user clicked through the permissions screen on without checking and downloaded?

Re:Seriously.. no.

[WillKemp]

[......] i know you're clearly anti-microsoft (from your regular posts) [......]

You must be one of the Microsoft Slashdot monitors.