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LG Reportedly Working On a Firefox OS Phone

Posted by samzenpus on from the getting-in-on-the-action dept.

SmartAboutThings writes "It seems that LG is going to join Alcatel, GeeksPhone and ZTE in the Firefox OS market. During an interview with Bulgarian online outlet Dnevnik.bg (in Bulgarian), LG's mobile communications head in Bulgaria spilled the beans on company's plans for the future. While he tried to refer only to plans that regard Bulgaria, it's obvious that he also spoke about LG's global strategy. Mister Valev said that LG is also looking to come up with a new Android tablet, phablet and even a smartwatch. Valev said LG is already working on a Firefox OS that could possibly be released in the first quarter of 2014."

4 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why? by gQuigs · · Score: 4, Interesting

    * You don't have to install apps to use them.
    * If they can pull off the update schedule (which they need to) it's going to be much better than Android for updates: https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2013/07/19/mozillas-heartbeat-quarterly-firefox-os-releases/
    * We need at least one more Open phone option

  2. Re:Why? by tlhIngan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What exactly is Firefox OS doing better than what is already available with iOS/Android/Windows Phone/BlackBerry/etc.?

    Even from a geek's perspective I really see nothing better about Firefox OS than the OSes available today.

    Easy - it's an OS that OEMs can customize heavily. It's not what Firefox brings to the table, it what's the OEMs can do to differentiate their phones in the market. Basically, LG wants to have a phone to sell they can call their own. Android's fairly big and complex so it's hard to fully do what you want with it. Firefox OS hopefully promises to be much simpler so each OEM can "make it their own".

    Plus, the price is right.

    If they target it as a low to mid range phone option that's more substance over style, it could find a very nice market full of people that are kind of tired of the high-end expensive 2-year contract cycles.

    Except there are TONS of low-end Android phones. In fact, they're one of the largest reasons why Android beats iOS - why should someone spend $200 for an iPhone 5 when the sales guy is pushing their 3-Android-Phones-for-free deal?

    Even best sellers like SGS3 are barely 10% of the Android market (60M units vs. 900M Androids) - and Samsung has 80% of that market. The rest of the phones are the ones they're releasing practically daily - all the million variations of low end phones you can go and get for free or so. So the top end phones do sell tons, but the low end phones get shoveled out the door.

  3. Re:Why? by Stoutlimb · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Updating the phone is the weak spot of Android. However, I'm not sure what the benefit of not needing to install apps to use them have, other than perhaps cause confusion to end users about what app they are even using at any given moment. Unless done well, this has the potential to be a security nightmare.

  4. Re:This will never be commercially successful by PCM2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is a niche product that will never ramp to significant volume. You heard it here first.

    Its "niche," though, is people who are using feature phones and are thinking about buying their first smartphone. For these people, the main draw of a smartphone is being able to access the web. Firefox OS delivers that at a price point of $80, or even less with carrier subsidies. It won't ramp to a significant volume in rich countries, but there is a much larger "significant volume" of customers in places like China, India, Brazil, Latin America, etc. So you never know.

    --
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