LG Reportedly Working On a Firefox OS Phone

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."

Comments

Re:Why?

[gQuigs]

* 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

What is the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the point of making a Firefox phone? With the GNU/HURD phone being released very soon, it will make Firefox OS based phones irrelevant.

Re:This will never be commercially successful

[PCM2]

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.

Re:why did they buy webOS then?

[hairyfeet]

Sorry but your analogy? Giant FAIL, massive on the level of fail in fact. You see IE had SEVERAL problems, major problems that Mozilla solved. 1.- IE had been abandoned by MSFT once they had "won" the browser war so it was becoming more and more creaky and crashprone, 2.- ActiveX left a hole you could drive a truck through with the OS, 3.- Bug and security fixes were practically non-existent because the team had been broken up, thus making it more and more risky.

Compare this to MozPhone, which even though there is a LOT of people advocating it here when I said simply "sell me on this phone" NOBODY could do it, not a single person could come up with a single reason why i should give up my Android for this phone.