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Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla announced today at its developer event in Orlando that the company is ending its smartphone experiment. Mozilla will stop developing and selling Firefox OS smartphones. Ari Jaaksi, Mozilla's SVP of Connected Devices, said, "We are proud of the benefits Firefox OS added to the Web platform and will continue to experiment with the user experience across connected devices." However, he added that it didn't end up providing a great user experience, so they decided to move their efforts elsewhere within the "connected devices" ecosystem. The TechCrunch article notes, "Mozilla has been on a streamlining track lately. Last week it announced that it would be looking for alternative homes for its Thunderbird email and chat client. The aim is for the company to focus more on its strongest and core products and reputation."
No wonder Mozilla is losing money.
I'm really eager to see how Slashdot spins this into the next episode of "Mozilla isn't listening to us, and they're ruining everything." This is one of the most entertaining over-the-top comedies I've seen to date.
Who knew?
I guess not enough of us....
Maybe they're wisely cutting their losses, but they're also re-enforcing their poor industry reputation. Here's my previous comment about FirefoxOS:
Don't get me wrong - I use Firefox on the desktop, but MoFo was such a grand vision, once upon a time. As MoFo just becomes "the Firefox group" such opportunity is lost. And to think - Fire[bird,fox] was the revolt app against former management that once again seems familiar. Eh ... maybe there's still an ember of a skunkworks left there - one can hope.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Pretty much everyone saw this coming ....and nothing of value was lost, except the money spent on the salaries of the people in charge promoting this stupidity, instead of investing in their core product. History will continue to repeat itself until the money runs out.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Another iPhone killer has died.
A race to the bottom is a race to the grave.
About a week ago, me and my friend had actually been discussing all the stupid business decisions that Mozilla has been making. Their OS and the Firefox Phone were two big ones that came to mind that just didn't make any sense to either of us. The money they have received, they've squandered on pointless pursuits into industries they stood no chance at making a dent in.
Seriously, what was the logic behind trying to get into the phone market in the first place? Other companies have tried just as well (Amazon, Microsoft) with little to no success. The thing that bugged us was the fact that they must have spent millions trying to do this which could have been more smartly invested to ensure that they didn't run out of money to support and improve the current products they know are/were liked (Thunderbird and Firefox). Now as result, we are left with them trying to find money streams to support Firefox, and most of this comes from pushing unwanted software and advertisement into Firefox.
I have this nagging feeling that Mozilla is about to do something monumentally stupid to Firefox. An un-skippable 5 second splash screen? Removal of the Back button? Permanent removal of the Menu Bar? Auto-hiding scroll bars? Remove the ability to use Firefox without logging in to a Firefox account? Disable your mouse's scroll wheel in favor of Auto-scrolling? Forced telemetry?
If there is one thing that they have shown us is that there is nothing that they wont do.
The way I see it, there is plenty of room to improve security on mobile devices. Maybe there are some other goals that could be incorporated in "new and innovative" products as well, but security is the big one for me. Mozilla seems like all the rest in its mobile offering: Look, a slightly new UI! But security as a top-tier feature with the kind of focus that could cause a paradigm shift? Forget it.
There's no reason for me to adopt FF OS, with few users and available apps, then suffer some ignominious revelation that I paid for yet another swiss cheese device that any sane person should be afraid to use.
I think the only unique angle they had with FF OS was that the "platform" was simply web server meets browser. IOW, more mainframe-oriented than even iOS and Android. No, thanks; I'm not looking for a fancy terminal.
But they seem to getting better recently, with the content-blocker for iOS and the new private browsing mode in Firefox.
Firefox OS was the first apperating system where all apps were apped in AppScript instead of LUDDITE languages! The LUDDITES at Mozilla can't stand app appers having their own apperating system, so they apped it!
Apps!
(I have a Nokia 770 in a storage box)
My Mozilla Flame has been my daily phone for nearly 18 months. The initial builds (v1.3) weren't great for usability but things got pretty stable around the 2.1 release. I use the phone as a phone, with a killer web browser, so 'apps' weren't an issue. But the writing has been on the wall for a while, with feature implementation slowing to a crawl over the past few months on the nightly builds.
IoT with a javascript API derived from Firefox OS has already been done in the form of JanOS.io thus a couple of hackers are ahead of the curve...
I have no desire to go back to Android and an iPhone is out of my price range, so I guess I'll cross over to the dark side and get a cheap Lumia when the current handset dies. :(
and I was just eyeing some firefox TV for xmas... But yeah it's hard to deny the lure of Android. Anyway, just focus on Android, I will remain forever a Firefox user. Snobs can keep Jobs's dick in their mouth.
I hate the monopoly of Android that is starting. I even roooted for Windows Phone to take off. Not that I like the platforms but because I want to see a 3 to 4 party healthy ecosystem.
Android and webkit specific CSS/HTML 5 is not healthy and Google is now the new Microsoft in the mobile world :-(
But Firefox OS was really really awful and only marketed in 3rd world countries.
Android today is bloated as hell and requires over 1 gig of ram. That is because outside of Apple there is no competition nor reason to improve their products.Mozilla at least tries to respect privacy but they need revenue and Android is free even if it is a poor performer on phones with 512 megs of ram. Andorid 2.2 gingerbread is still being sold in INdia and China for this reason. Again not healthy to have a 5 year old OS.
http://saveie6.com/
I've never seen a single "Firefox OS Smartphone" in any store I've ever been in. iPhones, yes, androids, yes, even windows phones. Not a single firefox phone.
Maybe that's why they didn't sell any of them. You have to, you know, get them in front of customers. People want to see and hold the thing they are going to buy, especially when their friends don't have FF phones to let them play with as they can with iOS and Android.
I'd like my Linux computer to run [many] apps like my Android phone and my Android phone to run [serious] apss like my Linux computer.
I guess the best emulation of a touch screen is a touchpad -- or maybe we could use two mouses? Anyone knows how to make X use two pointers?
My buddy just installed Pale Moon (think old school Firefox) on a rooted Galaxy S6 Edge, and he freakin' loves it. So I have to suspect the issue here isn't with users...at least as far as the browser part of the situation is concerned.
I think I'm just going to put this down as another example of the idiots running the show refusing to admit they made a huge mistake by trying to turn Firefox into a half-assed version of Chrome.
Firefox is now circling the drain. I'm glad I moved on when I did, rather than hoping in vain that heads would roll before the browser was totally ruined. I'll be truly sorry to see it go.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
didn't last long.
I'd like my Linux computer to run [many] apps like my Android phone and my Android phone to run [serious] apss like my Linux computer.
I guess the best emulation of a touch screen is a touchpad -- or maybe we could use two mouses? Anyone knows how to make X use two pointers?
Dork.
You can run a full Linux on your Android phone and you can run Android VM's all day in Linux.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.meefik.linuxdeploy&hl=en
http://www.keyables.com/2011/12/try-android-x86-40-on-virtualbox.html
http://www.keyables.com/2014/04/run-android-44-kitkat-on-windows-with-virtualbox.html
http://www.keyables.com/2015/10/how-to-run-android-x86-51-lollipop-with.html
How much better is Linux than Windows? sheeit.
http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/open-source-insider/2013/05/international-space-station-adopts-debian-linux-drop-windows-red-hat-into-airlock.html
http://itsfoss.com/97-percent-worlds-top-500-supercomputers-run-linux/
On phones it's an Android win unless you're trying to get some dick at Starbucks with an aluminum apple bite logo.
>> to focus more on its strongest and core products
As long as "products" remains plural Mozilla will still have a problem.
Never saw one. I think I heard one, late at night, but more likely a Sasquatch than one of those.
You're 16? maybe?
Dork.
In August of 2013, Firefox had a market share of over 16%.
Today, Firefox has a market share of about 7%.
That tells us everything we need to know.
Two things have happened:
1. They've driven away a lot of their existing users with shitty UI changes, and a lack of progress when it comes to fixing Firefox's slow performance.
2. They haven't attracted any new users.
Together, they have resulted in Firefox's market share being cut down to less than half of what it is, in just over two years!
In other companies, this would be considered a huge disaster.
Thanks for the pointers.
Running Android in a VM is a good idea, but Linux on Android seems a tad more mysterious to me. I always thought it should be easier, like in Chrome OS...
The problem are the sensors. With a little ingenuity, one could hook a temperature sensor to local weather, for instance, Android's camera to a webcam etc.
Well, let's see where this will take us.
Too bad about Firefox OS; I had great hopes for it.
Thanks, again.
Mozilla's next announcement: The Firefox Watch!
Mozilla has no fucking idea what its core products are. As for its reputation, there's no saving that. They're a joke in the industry and among users, and rightly so. The same tired, used-up people who've been wrong about everything for the last decade are still running the place .... right into the ground.
With the news from Mozilla lately all pathetically hopeless, stick a fork in the motherfuckers. The only thing they have mastered is sucking up as many gigabytes of memory as you throw at their garbage, while utterly fucking up their UI. To hell with the bastards.
..whether Brendan Eich would have fucked up quite as badly.
Tee. Hee.
Ah well. Back to my iPhone.
Oh, wait. I never left.
For their next trick, Mozilla will attempt to start a brand-new car company, from scratch, having never built a car before.
Ah, yes. I figure they got crushed by Ubuntu Phone...
Problem with Firefox is that you have to do so much post-install to disable all the privacy invasion crap, many of which are settings within the about:config about:permissions. I've been using Firefox for years and just found out about the about:permissions setting several weeks ago, when trying to find out how to really disable
1) Disable SmartBrowsing in preferences
2) Disable offline storage for all sites in about:permissions, because sites are still able to put offline storage on your computer, and clearing the files upon browser exit in preferences don't delete those automatically. They're persistent.
3) Search and disable all 'task*' options in about:config
4) Search and disable all '*DataReporting*' options in about:config
5) Search and disable all '*refer*' options in about:config
6) Search and change 'http://' options in about:config
7) Disable google/yahoo/bing search engines and updates in about:config
8) Disable all '*socal*' in about:config settings
9) Disable all '*telemetry*' in about:config settings
10) Disable all '*facebook* 'in about:config settings
11) Disable all '*google*' in about:config settings
12) Enable/disable do-not-track in preferences
[and if you're using Privacy Badger, make sure the jumper folder in your preferences directory gets wiped out or is empty-read-only, because it keeps track of your entire history, where clearing browser history does nothing to it]
[if you're using adblock plus, and/or other ad blocking software, you need to disable all the whitelist filters that have '@@' (usually marked green). These are not whitelists specific to adblock plus. They're in the subscriptions. After disabling those, you need to go into your browser settings and disable auto-update of all your subscriptions to prevent them from being overridden. For example, if you have a filter that disables all 3rd party images unless you're visiting from those domains, there are TONS of whitelists that would whitelist/bypass your settings by default. It's ridiculous. All the social networking ones. Go to a site like ESPN and just look all the twitter images that load without your consent]
I'm sure there are more, but these are ones that just come to mind
The aim is for the company to focus more on its strongest and core products and reputation. Seriously, who are they kidding?
I could have told them 2 years ago that this was a braindead idea. This was maybe viable in 2003-2005 when the smart phones where starting to appear, but doing something like this now, when Apple, Android and Windows dominate the market is just futile. It's like trying to develop a new consumer operating system for x86 computers, that market is full and complete and doing so is never going to catch on.
Starting with a build of Firefox that makes Slashdot users happy, disabling all the features they don't like. Once the Slashdot users are happy, word of mouth will spread and Firefox will get market share again.
People want apps to use on their smart phones. Firefox OS was never going to get the apps and therefore it was doomed to fail regardless of what merits the OS may have had. And it's hard to see many of those either.
"Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones"
:-)
should read: "Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Making Firefox OS Smartphones".
You can't stop selling something no one was buying!
No wonder Mozilla is losing money.
Lol, that's likely intentional :)
Seriously, I've heard repeatedly heard Mozilla management explaining that the goal isn't to make money.
On topic: I'm currently sitting in on a Q/A with the CEO who just said the Mozilla is doing fine financially.
In case you don't know: Mozilla Corp. is and will always be fully owned by Mozilla Foundation which is a non-profit working for an open web. See the manifesto for details... Just saying "losing money" is irrelevant, Mozilla invests in open internet, making money is not the goal.
Any recommendation from say, Mozilla?
So, you were proudly making a non-spyware cell phone OS and now you're abruptly announcing you're quitting? I guess that means that if we wish to run a smartphone, then we need to run a spyware OS. Well, crap.
Was waiting for version 2.5 : now that looked promising. Also waiting for 1GB RAM, or 768MB RAM, to be on a bit more of a safe side.
I will simply continue to use and recommend using a dumb phone, but what about eventually needing a "smart" one for business reasons? Bringing the Internet to homeless people, or whatever?
Brenden Eich would continue selling that phone.
If everyone reading this Slashdot article donated just $3 to The Mozilla Foundation, they could copy Chrome perfectly and have a few million more dollars for office furniture!
The problem was getting one. They were only released in small emerging markets. Even their developer phone sold out before a lot of interested users knew it existed. The easiest one to get was the ZTE Open, an incredibly low-end phone with virtually non-existent support from ZTE. (you were stuck with v1.0 for a while. We got a 1.1 release, with impressive performance improvements, and a buggy 1.2 release long after those were outdated. Savvy users have 2.0 unofficially now, though that is also now outdated, with 2.5 being a rather dramatic update.) The Fx0 is the next viable option, as it was very recently discovered for a good price on Amazon. It sold so many so quickly that the vendor raised the price, all despite the locked bootloader making it less attractive as a dev unit.
Why they never released it a budget phone in established markets is beyond me. Or why they didn't produce enough dev units to meet the demand of interested developers. Unbelievably, they even gave some of those away to developers as an incentive, while shorting the clamoring hoards who wanted to buy the thing!
There was some talk about selling smart feature-phones running FxOS in the US next year. I guess we'll see if those partners strike out on their own or not.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Mozilla basically wasted time and resources with FFOS. Even version 2.5 is a spectacular failure.
br />
And Mozilla will waste more time and resources by forcing GUI-changes or unwanted built-in functionality on firefox users while not updating the browser itself.
Wow... What incredible timing.
My Nexus 7 with Android 5 has become almost unusable. It freezes, it lags, it spontaneously reboots. The wifi is completely unreliable.
I have thought about downgrading back to Android 4, but the vulnerabilities are a discouragement.
Of course, one obvious solution is to buy a new device.
But I have sensed that there is actually an opening now in the market for something that is not iOS and not Android. I thought that FxOS was perhaps best positioned to exploit that opening. But they have failed to do so. It looks more and more like the up and comer in the market is... Microsoft. That bites. Microsoft doesn't address the low-end market the way FxOS could have.
80% of smart phone use is ***texting***, Facebook/Twitter, Youtube, web browsing, and telephoning. You don't need 64-core magic for this. 5-year old hardware is perfectly adequate. A $30-40 phone that can do this would sell very well. It wouldn't replace iPhones and iPads. It wouldn't drive Android out of the market. But there is a comfortable place for it. And if its apps could run equally well in a desktop web browser, or a browser hosted on Android/iOS..., that lessens the downside of not being #1 or #1.5 in the market. And it's only $40, so it's ok if the kids get bored with it.
At budget prices, Mozilla wasn't ever going to make money on it. And they would have to spend a lot of money on R&D. I get that. But without it, they become almost irrelevant. They are not the default browser on any platform. Chrome has largely displaced them as the browser to use if you are going to install something that is not the default browser. Web devs may not even bother testing on Firefox anymore. Test first for Chrome, then Safari, then Edge, then IE, then maybe FF. Resolving issues on FF is the lowest priority. It would have been nice to have a native FxOS with 10% of the mobile market.
But market realities aren't always kind to dreams. And Mozilla has decided that this dream must die. We'll see how long Mozilla survives FxOS.