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Mozilla Drops $25 Smartphone Plans, Will Focus On Higher Quality Devices
An anonymous reader writes: When Mozilla developed Firefox OS, its goal was not to provide the best smartphone experience, but to provide a "good enough" smartphone experience for a very low price. Unfortunately, these cheap handsets failed to make a dent in the overall smartphone market, and the organization is now shifting its strategy to start producing a better experience for better devices. CEO Chris Beard said, "If you are going to try to play in that world, you need to offer something that is so valuable that people are willing to give up access to the broader ecosystem. In the mass market, that's basically impossible." Of course, when moving to the midrange smartphone market, or even the high end, there's still plenty of competition, so the new strategy may not work any better. However, they've hinted at plans to start supporting Android apps, which could help them play catch-up. Beard seems fixated on this new goal: "We won't allow ourselves to be distracted, and we won't expand to new segments until significant traction is demonstrated." He adds, "We will build products that feel like Mozilla."
So why is Mozilla trying to enter into the cheap handset market? This isn't their core competencies.
It just seems like they're flailing about trying to define the next big thing. And, really, that seems to be a waste of resources.
This just feels like Mozilla has kind of lost the plot.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Law 8 is "the law of duality" - every market becomes a two horse race. Coca-Cola & Pepsi, Nike & Reebok, etc. The horses here are "iPhone" and "Android". The best Mozilla can hope for at this point is to become Royal Crown Cola.
Do you have ESP?
Quoted from the Mozilla guy's email :
"We will ship v2.2 and all pending work to deliver entry-level smartphones with our key partners. Additional appropriate feature work will be rolled into Ignite. v2.2 will be maintained as a long-lived branch with security and stability updates only."
Probably means that cheap Firefox OS 2.2 phones will have a stagnant OS, but if security updates come in with regularity and for years that's precisely what we need. Are other people feeling that way? I don't care that much about how many megapixels and shiznits there are in that thing, I want it to be supported.
It lacks features though, I hope when they talk of "extensibilty" that will include ways to filter the web. PR about freedom and privacy does not work so well if it's e.g. loading facebook buttons everywhere and they can't be blocked.
Much of the value of Google's contacts, calendar, music player, etc. on Android is I can access the data from any browser. It's so useful I grit my teeth and share my personal info with evil Google. Firefox OS has its own HTML5 versions of those apps running locally, yet they don't run in desktop or Android Firefox. If the apps did run in every Firefox (and eventually any standards-compliant browser) and Firefox Sync securely kept the apps' data in sync (FF Sync is encrypted, so no one can spy on my personal data) then i would find it pretty compelling.
That's my 2 cents, it merely takes $20M to implement. I like Firefox, and I enjoy the sync. Having open productivity apps running in a browser fits with Mozilla's mission. I want more stuff running in a browser without spying, because it levels the playing field for Linux and could lead to a lightweight boot-to-browser environment for my phone, laptop, desktop, and tablet. Part of Google has that vision with ChromeOS, but they can't let go of the lock-in and dominance Android gave them. It's depressing seeing everyone piss all over Mozilla instead of supporting an alternative to picking a closed proprietary environment provided by a spying corporation.
=S