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$33 Firefox Phone Launched In India
davidshenba writes Intex and Mozilla have launched Cloud FX, a smartphone powered by Mozilla's Firefox OS. The phone has a 1 GHz processor, 2 Megapixel camera, dual SIM, 3.5 inch capacitive touchscreen. Though the phone has limited features, initial reviews say that the build quality is good for the price range. With a price tag of $33 (2000 INR), and local languages support the new Firefox phone is hitting the Indian market of nearly 1 billion mobile users.
If I didn't already have a $300 smartphone, I'd snap one of these up in a heartbeat. It does make and receive phone calls, right? Amazing...
Umm... I guess this assuming that 80% of the people in India are smart phone users. That last i heard, smart phone usage in the USA was around 65%.
The average income in India is $1,500 USD/year vs the USA where it is $50,000 USD/year (roughly 33 times higher). $33 dollars doesn't sound like much to people in the USA, but that is 2.2% of the average Indian person's annual salary. That 2.2% number would be around $1100 outlay for the average American worker.
Perspective is everything when you try compare the consumer market between countries like the USA and India.
Much as I respect Mozilla as an organisation, even a quad core phone is worse at interpreting web-stack apps than byte-compiled or actual compiled code. I don't understand how lower processing power and higher processing requirements are going to solve anybody's problems.
Why would someone buy one of these when you could just buy a top of the line 3 year old phone like the Galaxy Nexus for the same price while absolutely blowing it away on specs...
Umm... I guess this assuming that 80% of the people in India are smart phone users. That last i heard, smart phone usage in the USA was around 65%.
The average income in India is $1,500 USD/year vs the USA where it is $50,000 USD/year (roughly 33 times higher). $33 dollars doesn't sound like much to people in the USA, but that is 2.2% of the average Indian person's annual salary. That 2.2% number would be around $1100 outlay for the average American worker.
Perspective is everything when you try compare the consumer market between countries like the USA and India.
A lot of people in developing nations like India and various African countries already buy used Android and iOS devices that have been shipped over from wealthier nations. These phones are typically available for less than $30 ($8 to $10 is common), and likely work even better than even the best Firefox OS phones. Even if they're running older versions of Android or iOS, they can still at least run some apps that will never run on Firefox OS.
Firefox OS really is pointless. It's targeting devices that are already considered low-powered even in developing nations. Worse, these Firefox OS devices are more expensive than the better performing and more useful second-hand Android and iOS phones that actually run the apps that people want, in addition to running the web technology apps that Firefox OS supports.
I just can't see how Firefox OS hopes to compete when it doesn't offer anything at all that's better than years-old Android and iOS phones, and especially when Firefox OS is worse than those old versions of iOS and Android in so many ways.
I was really excited about Firefox OS when it first came on the scene, but since then I've heard nothing but awful reviews of the devices that have been released so far. All of the reviews say that they're slow, the software really sucks, and they just can't even compete with ancient iOS, Android, RIM/BlackBerry and Windows phones. I've watched some vids of people using these Firefox OS phones and they've looked really slow and underpowered to me. Having to write all of the apps in a slow language like JavaScript probably doesn't help I'm sure. So I'm really skeptical that these new phones won't be total shit like the earlier ones were.
I noticed this comment had got a five early on...basing on assumptions that the big powerful USA has all the money its smartphone ownership percentage should be highest, I find this astonishing.
The link at the bottom is linked to(Slashdot will not accept a direct link) to Googles amazing tool where TNS have released their survey data on 54 countries and ownership of smartphones, and guess what USA is only the 19th country of percentage of smartphone ownership per person, drawing with Canada. India is already at 7%, and that is without phones dropping to $30; Google is targeting India with the Android One(A reference phone) at cheaper than Motorola E prices. India already has 7% smartphones that is 85.9 Million smartphone owners(Looks Like A billion mobile users realistic)...to put that in perspective the USA has only 148.5 Million.
Tomi provides unnecessary commentary to this data. The http://communities-dominate.bl...
The ignorance of American people on the world is astonishing.
July 2014: 9.78%
I don't like the posting of netmarketshare as gospel especially when they adjust their data, but quoting wikipedia as a measure is simply spinning figures in a "I don't even give a fuck about reality way" A quick look at statcounter shows firefox usage slightly down http://gs.statcounter.com/#bro... and at 18%. Netshare shows firefox slightly down at http://marketshare.hitslink.co... as 15%. Not a million miles from each other, but the trends basically show firefox usage is pretty flat. Even these figures are less of a reflection of how badly firefox is doing, but how well chrome is.
Yo dis here place be overrun wif wintrolls what 'chew trippin foo'
The last UX conference I was at we had a speaker that demonstrated that the next 1-2 billion "smart" phone users were coming from Africa and Asia where more modern devices didn't stand a chance in the majority of the market. From a cost per device point of view, sure, but more from the fact that we are creating first world apps, UIs and OSes that might not have anywhere near the traction they have here because of completely different needs. He saw an incredible opportunity there.
DaveyJJ
Don't be mental. Desktops are dying off, and Firefox with them. Once you adjust these stats to only show desktops, Firefox isn't dying at all.
So, given that their Android offering isn't seeing any uptake, like ALL non-stock Android browsers, where does that leave Mozilla? They can't compete on iOS or Windows - the former won't let them run their own browser, just a reskinned MobileSafari that's doomed to run slower than the built-in one, and the latter is a truly dying platform that ALSO won't let them freely run their own browser engine.
In other words, Mozilla is doing precisely what they should in order to keep their browser engine alive. I know you anti-Australis and anti-Chrome guys just can't fathom this, because you want to be right and want Firefox to do whatever will please YOU, but if that's the route they took then it would be doomed to die even faster. You're a niche of a niche these days.
So beg all you want, but Mozilla have their eyes on survival. If the best you can do is throw them under the bus because you dislike having to install a couple more addons to get your square tabs and complex UI back, then you really have no right to call their decisions stupid, nor are you contributing anything to the cause: you're just being selfish and myopic.
It's truly heartbreaking to see the browser that was once fast, light, and speedy turn into a ugly slow piece of shit that it once aimed to replace.
Fuck Asa Dotzler and fuck Firefox. Hopefully Pale Moon becomes a fully-featured fork. It's either that or Seamonkey.
Clever girl !
So how exactly do Mozilla's recent and current actions lead to their survival?
Nobody is adopting Firefox OS. Nobody is adopting Firefox for Android. Firefox has been losing 25% of its user base every year lately thanks to idiotic changes. Mozilla have no other products of significance other than Firefox.
Where does survival come in? For all intents and purposes, Mozilla is currently irrelevant within the mobile space, and that clearly won't be changing. Their influence within the desktop and laptop market is rapidly diminishing. Once that's gone they'll have nothing.
Why will anyone pay any attention at all to an organization which offers products that almost nobody uses?
Why will a company like Google seek out agreements (that provide basically all of Mozilla's funding!) when almost nobody uses Mozilla's browsers?
Um, they are doing all they can: making their own mobile platform out of their product. What else can they do? Any bright ideas? I honestly fail to see any alternatives that will help them gain users while improving their platform. More users = more clout, especially with the likes of Google. Even if they can only gain a few million here and there, that's more than they're losing now.
Besides that, their existing userbase is increasingly toxic. It's rife with blow-hards who help very little, ask for more than is possible, and have no ideas on how to draw more users in besides "exactly what *I* want!!" Given that, I can hardly blame them for doing everything in their power to draw in a less rancid userbase.
Staying the course will not make them more relevant. Improving just their desktop browser will only kill them faster. They can't get a foothold on competitor's OSes, because it's been shown that very few users want to use anything but the built-in browser, and despite that two of the three remaining major OSes have blocked them out entirely.
So again: any actual bright ideas? Or are you just moaning because they aren't doing everything for you perfectly enough?
The Flame developer device is snappy enough but with way better specs.
Mozilla want to condemn the 'developing world' into using 128MB of RAM, which will obviously throttle performance.
I'd be curious to know how much half a gig would add to the price.
100 years ago Kodak gave Brownie cameras away fro free - it was the film and processing that the owner had to pay for (you sent in the whole camera which could shoot about 100 pictures and would get back another preloaded with film - you paid for the photos you got back )
So just like the cheap (and not so cheap) phones WE can get here - its the service that the user takes the big hit.
So how much does THAT cost (its ignorant hype to simply say "OMG !!!cheap phone!!! .... so wonderous !!!!!"
Can't wait to see how the market for chargers batteries and charge stations take off. There everyone is so use to 10 day standby.
>Mozilla want to condemn the 'developing world' into using 128MB of RAM
What? Where did Mozilla say that? Last I checked, they just want to be able to support 128MB devices, because they have to go with the whims of the actual device manufacturers. In fact, I remember the 128MB configuration being something the devs tabled a long while back (on Bugzilla anyway), thinking 256MB was going to be the minimum.
This is why they are setup for imminent failure. The best selling mobiles in India are what the western world would call mid-range, like the Lenovo VIbe X.
And even then most are mid-range only in price and build-quality. Chipset-wise the Chinese phone-makers are bringing in some rather speedy models. And this already in a country that has 87% mobile penetration.
If they think that India is a market that will swallow up junk because it is so poor, or even if they think it is the 'developing world', they are delusionally out-of-touch.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Maybe 'condemn' is the wrong word, then.
But they're complicit in bowing to 'the whims of the actual device manufacturers'. The device may run in 128MB in its Tarako config but the phone won't deliver an optimal experience.
I'm just reflecting that I can't imagine the difference in price between 128 and 256MB modules would be that huge in 2014. Even the $25 Rpi model A shipped with 256MB back in 2012.
Would a $38 phone sell any worse if a 256MB module were $5 extra?
It's just released, and it's already on version 33?
Table-ized A.I.
The indian market is 1 billion people, most in some state of poverty. You can "do well" there, by western standards, without touching more then a tiny fraction of it. Apple don't have 100% of the US population as a market, and don't have 100% of the market. In India, if both those things were true, it would only represent about 30% of the total population.
They could fix the bloat, bugs and crashes instead of trying to add new features that nobody wants (except maybe Chrome users, but they'd just use Chrome anyway).
As a Firefox user since way back when it was called Phoenix, all I really want is Phoenix 0.5 with complete and optimized support for modern HTML/CSS/etc.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I don't know, but I still fail to see the real problem. I agree that it sucks that they would deliver a degraded experience, but that's assuming that the cost of another 128mb of RAM truly is negligible, to both the manufacturers and the users. Plus, if the user's experience is so degraded by it, no one will buy the phone and the manufacturer will either learn or go out of business. But Mozilla has to try what they can to gain adoption, and that includes taking risks on potential failures. They can't play it safe here.
>all I really want is Phoenix 0.5 with complete and optimized support for modern HTML/CSS/etc.
Rose-colored glasses much? What exactly about Firefox 31 is any more crashy, bloated, and buggy than Phoenix was for its time? Seriously. Try using Firefox 1, 1.5, 2, 3, etc and compare them against "modern" Firefox, if you can even browse the modern web with them, let alone without them freezing up all the time and gobbling up your RAM because of badly-engineered addons.
To support all those modern things you want, it had to "bloat up". To support modern OSes it needed a newer UI engine. To optimize support for HTML/etc, it had to hardware accelerate, multi-thread, etc. All of which make things less stable for a while. If you're not sure what I mean, Firefox 4-7 were MUCH crashier and memory-slobbering than 31 is for most people, save for a few still running out-of-date addons and plugins, crashy video drivers, and other things bound to cause crashes. There's a reason more people switched to Chrome back then, and it's not because Firefox was a superior product to what it is now.
Besides that, you clearly have no idea just how many bugs, crashers, memory leaks, and other such issues they've addressed in the last few years. In fact it doesn't sound like you're aware of ANYTHING they've done except the things you don't like. And better yet: NOBODY wants these features? Who the hell are you to arrogantly say this? Perhaps a few thousand self-professed "power users" of Firefox feel this way, but their voices are slowly being drowned out by the voices of people who actually came back to Firefox because of these "features nobody wants", especially Chrome users who clearly don't WANT to use Chrome anymore. Stop rejecting reality just because it doesn't bend to your whims all the time.
I fail to understand what you are saying. My point is that India is not a market for extremely low-end devices like the Intex shown here. In fact, Indians being too poor to own existing smartphones is a myth since it already has 87% penetration and most of those are mid-range smartphones as of today.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
It's a tad late but India has a poverty level of only about 20% roughly. The problem in India is actually that the gap between poor and rich is vast. Most Indians (esp. urban populations) can easily afford mid-range smartphones.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
A phone with 128mb of RAM running apps written in javascript on an ARM processor. Good luck with that.
Right: so still, think about those numbers. 30% of India's population is over 100% of the US in terms of sheer number of people. So a low-end phone is exactly the right device to target there.