What's the point? [LWN.net]

What's the point?

Posted Mar 1, 2012 6:48 UTC (Thu) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link]

>> With iOS and Android, you can't even transfer apps between them. That's good for developers (sell apps more easily to more people) and users (move apps around).

> I don't even know: to laugh or to cry.
> 1. You can create iOS app and sell it to [potentially] 250 millions of users.
> 2. You can create Android app and sell it to [potentially] 150 millions of users.
> 3. Or you can create "standards-based app" and sell it to [may be] 20 millions of users on desktop, tablets and mobiles.

No, iOS and Android can both run web apps. The potential market for web apps is 250M iOS users + 150M Android users + 20M web-based OS users = 420M users (using your numbers). And that's ignoring the web on the desktop.

A web-based OS *does* help right here and right now. Web apps can reach most users, the web is the platform with the most reach of any platform. That's great for developers, who can sell to more users, and also great for users, who can use apps from the device of their choice.

What's the point?

Posted Mar 1, 2012 7:53 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

No, iOS and Android can both run web apps.

Well, kinda. If you squint just right. In both cases webapps are pale shadows of the native apps and it's hard to convince people to use them. They will use them if there are no choice, but given choice they choose native app 9 times out 10.

The potential market for web apps is 250M iOS users + 150M Android users + 20M web-based OS users = 420M users (using your numbers).

Not even close. Most iOS users have visited Appstore. Most Android users have at least opened Android Market once. Yet most Chrome users have not ever opened Chrome Web Store. And I doubt situation will be any different with Mozilla Store. 20M is my rough estimate of all the users who'll visit said store in a year - and it may be too optimistic one.

And that's ignoring the web on the desktop.

20M is mostly from desktop. Users of B2G abomination will be rounding error from this value. Sure, they'll be captive audience and will all visit said store at one point or another, but I don't expect to see more them million or two of them in the first year.

the web is the platform with the most reach of any platform.

True.

Web apps can reach most users

False. Web apps and native apps are very well separated in minds of customers. You can, of course, wrap web apps in some kind of envelope and put it on Android market, but then it'll be perceived as native app - and a poor one at that.

Now, if B2G platform will ever become popular, then this perception may change. But so far all the ideas start with sudden unexplained popularity of B2G platform and I don't foresee where this strange enthusiasm will come from.

What's the point?

Posted Mar 1, 2012 15:54 UTC (Thu) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link]

> Yet most Chrome users have not ever opened Chrome Web Store

Web Apps != Chrome Web Store. Web apps are just websites, that's all that B2G "apps" are. If you use Chrome or any web browser, you are using "web apps".

The interface for accessing the apps might be more "appy" with the Chrome Web Store". But even without that, websites like gmail are "apps". "Pin as app tab" for example is nothing to do with the Chrome Web Store, but it is "appy".

In fact, the Chrome Web Store doesn't have real websites in it. They can't do stuff normal websites can, for example they can't use Facebook Connect.

What's the point?

Posted Mar 1, 2012 16:16 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Web apps are just websites, that's all that B2G "apps" are.

I seriously doubt it. If web apps are “just a websites” then why do we need all these new APIs?

But even without that, websites like gmail are "apps".

On mobile? No, they are not. And that's my point: when people are given choice they prefer native applications.

"Pin as app tab" for example is nothing to do with the Chrome Web Store, but it is "appy".

And how many users this feature have? This is genuine question, not a sarcasm. I, personally, know exactly zero real users of said feature, but then, I may be unusual. If you have some statistic then I'd like to hear it.

In fact, the Chrome Web Store doesn't have real websites in it. They can't do stuff normal websites can, for example they can't use Facebook Connect.

So you want to say that Facebook Connect will magically propel Mozilla's store to stardom… hard to believe, but well, it is a point. I doubt it'll be enough to save B2G, though…

What's the point?

Posted Mar 1, 2012 17:55 UTC (Thu) by jmalcolm (guest, #8876) [Link]

I do not think this has anything to do with the argument but I certainly use "pin as app tab".

I keep a large number of tabs open and it is wonderful to have a few of them pinned so I can reach them easily. GMail is actually pinned twice for me: once as an email tab and once as my calendar. Sometimes I pin things only temporarily. For example, I might have eBay pinned for a few days if I am on the hunt for something. Some tabs I only pin at work. For example, I do not use Basecamp much on the weekend but I probably use it a few dozen times a day at work.

The last thing I want to do is spend time hunting for a site I use many times a day a moment or two each time. App tabs are an excellent enhancement to my workflow.

What's the point?

Posted Mar 1, 2012 18:00 UTC (Thu) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link]

>> Web apps are just websites, that's all that B2G "apps" are.

> I seriously doubt it. If web apps are “just a websites” then why do we need all these new APIs?

There are not a lot of new APIs. For something like say Angry Birds, *no* new APIs are needed.

For something that sends SMSes, then the new SMS API would be needed.

But the real point is that these new APIs are going to be in all browsers, they will be standardized as part of the web. (Perhaps with changes, that's how the standards process works.)

>> "Pin as app tab" for example is nothing to do with the Chrome Web Store, but it is "appy".

> And how many users this feature have? This is genuine question, not a sarcasm. I, personally, know exactly zero real users of said feature, but then, I may be unusual. If you have some statistic then I'd like to hear it.

Well, I use it and most people I know. But like you, I don't have statistics. The "pin as app tab" feature is not that important though, it just makes things a little more convenient. Websites are still websites.

> So you want to say that Facebook Connect will magically propel Mozilla's store to stardom… hard to believe, but well, it is a point. I doubt it'll be enough to save B2G, though…

What? No, I just mentioned FC as an example to show that Chrome Web Store apps are *not* normal web pages.

What's the point?

Posted Mar 8, 2012 8:55 UTC (Thu) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link]

You have very Iphone-loving-first-world POV.(also very skewed)

As I see it B2G is a smart phone platform for very cheap third world phones. By relying on HTML5 only the phones can potentially have fairly low specs and therefore be very cheap. Theoretically the smallest platform for a smart phone is just the browser, because that is the one component you cannot leave out.
Also HTML5 "should" be the safer choice if you don't want to be sued for extortion money from patent trolls like Appl€ and M$ etc.

What's the point?

Posted Mar 8, 2012 9:59 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

As I see it B2G is a smart phone platform for very cheap third world phones.

IOW: for the field which is totally owned by Android today.

By relying on HTML5 only the phones can potentially have fairly low specs and therefore be very cheap.

Well, this remains to be seen. HTML5 technologies are many things, but “low specs” they are not (on desktop you may need ~200MB just to use one complex webapp like GMail). The fact that B2G was demoed on a system with specs identical to HTC Dream (which supported all the latest Android goodies till ICS was released) does not mean finished system will be able to run adequately on such SOC.

And you still need to prove that “obsolete, yet still widely used” Gidgerbread is worse then “brand-spanking new, but empty B2G phone”. Third world may like cheap phones, but it likes Angry Birds as well. Sure, there are HTML5-based one today, but it remains to be seen how many developers will port their goodies to HTML5/B2G (desktop webapps, sadly, are not all that usable on touchscreen device).

Theoretically the smallest platform for a smart phone is just the browser, because that is the one component you cannot leave out.

Have the B2G developers learned nothing? This is repeat of 20 years old battle: while Lotus developers tried to squeeze Lotus 1-2-3 in 640K Microsoft added features to Excel. Two years later Lotus went from “market leader” to “also run”. And B2G is not even a market leader today…

Also HTML5 "should" be the safer choice if you don't want to be sued for extortion money from patent trolls like Appl€ and M$ etc.

Perhaps you meant Oracle? There are more then enough things in B2G-phone for “Appl€ and M$”.

My personal POV: B2G released four years ago (in 2007) had the potential to take the world by storm. Today… the opportunity is just not there anymore.

What's the point?

Posted Mar 8, 2012 12:01 UTC (Thu) by KaiRo (subscriber, #1987) [Link]

As you're getting into specific specs: The devices Telefonica used for their deoms were weaker than those Mozilla used for the demos with Gaia UI (Samsung Galaxy S II in the latter case). Still, all those are of course demo setups and there's a couple of performance improvements still to be made.

That said, Android needs ~300MB for the base system, B2G needs ~100MB. So there's a real chance that B2G can be more performant on low-spec devices than Android.

What's the point?

Posted Mar 8, 2012 12:44 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

That said, Android needs ~300MB for the base system, B2G needs ~100MB. So there's a real chance that B2G can be more performant on low-spec devices than Android.

Android only started requiring ~300MB when nice UI features were added in ICS. You can still run older versions - and they will work just fine.

What's the point?

Posted Mar 8, 2012 11:58 UTC (Thu) by KaiRo (subscriber, #1987) [Link]

The market for rather low-end phones is surely one where we'll see strongly pushed B2G offerings first, due to the engagement of Telefonica, and that's a market where it's surely easier to make a significant impact than on the golden-iCage-loving US high-end market, for example.
But I'm pretty sure that B2G will do well on high-end smart phones and tablet as well technically - the question is if it's possible to make a dent into the current offerings marketing-wise. But perhaps there's three or four people left in the "first world" that care at least a bit about personal freedom and privacy, then it might have some chance with them as well.

What's the point?

Posted Mar 8, 2012 12:58 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

The market for rather low-end phones is surely one where we'll see strongly pushed B2G offerings first, due to the engagement of Telefonica, and that's a market where it's surely easier to make a significant impact than on the golden-iCage-loving US high-end market, for example.

Superconvincing argument. For 2006. Somewhat convincing argument. For 2009. Irrelevant argument. For 2012.

“Low spec” segment you are talking about is not dying. It's already dead. In a world where someone may sell device with 700 MHz processor and 256 Megabytes of RAM for $25 these differences are just not relevant. Pretty soon your basic $30-$50 phone will have SOC with 1GHz CPU and 1GB of RAM - more then enough for any contemporary phone OS. Sure, it'll have crappy LCD and, perhaps, cheap resistive touchscreen, but these things affect Android as much as they affect B2G.

But perhaps there's three or four people left in the "first world" that care at least a bit about personal freedom and privacy, then it might have some chance with them as well.

Oh, sure. There will be hundreds, perhaps thousands of them. Large number but not large enough to justify creation of even a single phone model (see OpenMoko story).

What's the point?

Posted Mar 9, 2012 9:33 UTC (Fri) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link]

LOL. For really cheap phones every cent matters. An Android phone needs what? 256mb RAM and 512 mb of storage and a 600mhz SOC?
If Mozilla can push these specs down to something like 128 mb RAM, 256 mb of storage and a 400 Mhz SOC it might really have a winner.
I don't believe your 1Ghz, 1GB claim for one second. SOC and RAM prices matter a lot otherwise MS wouldn't have crippled Windows Mobile Phone 7.5 Series Second Enterprise Edition to be able to run on 256mb devices.
Android devices might reach $70 next year (like Eric Schmidt said), but going lower than that is really important for the third world.

A simpler SOC and less storage means lower battery requirement which also lowers the cost. If you build millions and millions of these things every cent matters, no doubt about it.

What's the point?

Posted Mar 9, 2012 11:07 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

For really cheap phones every cent matters.

True. That's why 80% of phones sold in the world today are dumbphones. People just don't buy smartphones if they don't need smartphone capabilities. But if they do then they, of course, will compare price/performance ratio, not just price.

If Mozilla can push these specs down to something like 128 mb RAM, 256 mb of storage and a 400 Mhz SOC it might really have a winner.

Nope. As I've said: in 2006, 2007, may be in 2008 - this will be huge. Today? It's pointless. Most phone SOCs today are designed with Android in mind. Otherwise tens of millions of sales are not guaranteed. And custom chip just for B2G will be more expensive! That's why B2G is trying to piggyback on Android hardware! But if it uses Android hardware then this hardware is android-capable by definition!

SOC and RAM prices matter a lot otherwise MS wouldn't have crippled Windows Mobile Phone 7.5 Series Second Enterprise Edition to be able to run on 256mb devices.

It's matter of timing. If you want to ship device right now, today, then 256MB is somewhat cheaper then 512MB (and 1GB is significantly more expensive), but 128MB make no sense already. Year from now it'll be 512MB for cheapest reasonable option and 1GB will be only marginally more costly. Two (perhaps three) years from now 1GB will be reasonable minimum.

Moore's law makes things cheaper, but it does not mean you can buy cheaper and cheaper chips: manufacturers usually prefer to sell more complex chip for the same (or almost the same) price. And contemporary state-of-the-art processes are incredibly expensive: they can produce very cheap SOCs… but only if you measure quantities in tens of millions. Go to single digit millions - and it's suddenly significantly more expensive, go to hundreds of thousands - and price will go through the roof!

If you build millions and millions of these things every cent matters, no doubt about it.

Sales matter more. If you don't know if you can sell “millions and millions” of these devices then you can get cheap prices only if you are ready to buy tens of millions of SOCs without buyers for the phones. Note that totally cumulative sales of Windows Phone 7 sales are yet to reach 10 million (they are about to cross that line… 1.5 years after start of the sales). Mozilla probably has enough money in bank to try that, but then it'll be stuck with one particular SOC for a long, long time. No a way to win the war.

The times when low spec mattered are long gone. It was important capability 15 years ago (when low-spec PalmOS ruled the PDA world), but today it's no longer a problem to solve.

This concentration on low-spec phones is classic "fight the last war": you can sell existing, established platform using this selling point (that's why Symbian, Samsung Wave and others are still around), but it matters only for large, yet constantly shrinking market which makes it stupid for the new platform development.

What's the point?

Posted Mar 9, 2012 12:32 UTC (Fri) by KaiRo (subscriber, #1987) [Link]

Note that Mozilla is not planning to sell any phones, just working exclusively on the base software stack.

It's partners like Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Qualcomm (and a number of others that can't be talked about in public yet) who are planning to sell hardware or devices running a Boot to Gecko stack. And I guess they know those markets better than any of us. I trust them when they are enthusiastic about this stack and say there's a good chance it will be successful.

What's the point?

Posted Mar 9, 2012 13:27 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

It's partners like Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Qualcomm (and a number of others that can't be talked about in public yet) who are planning to sell hardware or devices running a Boot to Gecko stack.

Sure. And they will use Android-capable SOCs to do that. Creating some kind of low-spec SOC just for B2G makes no sense at this point.

I trust them when they are enthusiastic about this stack and say there's a good chance it will be successful.

I don't. The problem they face with Android is the fact that it threatens to turn telecoms to “dumb pipes”. Note that about half of revenue in mobile industry comes from voice calls: telecoms will do whatever it takes to protect that. And free, user-controllable handsets threaten their control over these revenues. Thus they want some alternative where they can control the handsets and make sure things like Skype will at least be charged “appropriately”. Mozilla is popular yet it does not have enough resources to threaten their control thus they like it. But I'm doubt they are all that sure B2G will fly: for them it's “yet another bet” - one among dozen or so other bets which are in play. In any case they will cripple the platform to make sure end-user have very little control over the handset: this is what the telecoms usually do, after all.

What's the point?

Posted Mar 9, 2012 13:08 UTC (Fri) by spaetz (subscriber, #32870) [Link]

khim, can you just give it a rest now? By now we all got your point, and it seems you just can never leave the last word to others. We know you opinion, others are entitled to other opinions. And why should companies such as Telefonica or Deutsche Telekom not be allowed to experiment with alternatives to Android/Windows/iOS ? Following your arguments, one would never have started Linux in 1991 when there were so many established platforms around. And even if B2G fails, but leads to an improved Gecko engine through that, it would be a success in my book. So relax, lean back and see what happens. You can still pull up the "I told you so" card in a few years....

What's the point?

Posted Mar 9, 2012 15:31 UTC (Fri) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link]

OK, I rephrase(to appease you): IF B2G works (better) on the slowest, cheapest (and still produced) SOCs than Android and manufactures don't have to put in that much storage AND they don't have to pay MS,Apple AND carries will subsidize the phones more(because they can brand them better) THEN B2G might have a chance.
I know that is a lot of IF but it is not unimaginable that B2G might get some traction.

And just for the record: I am not sure it will work. JS+DOM+Web rendering engines right now are not suited for low end devices IMO. In hindsight an open phone based on the enlightenment stack would have been the most promising solution, but I guess nobody was willing to put in the effort to build a Iphone-like experience based on EFL a few years ago. Or they bet on GTK or proprietary shit, which just wasn't good enough.
Nowadays Qt(5) is probably the best solution for an open phone that people actually want to use. Just give people a really open N9 and just be amazed with what they would be able to do.

What's the point?

Posted Mar 1, 2012 17:43 UTC (Thu) by jmalcolm (guest, #8876) [Link]

You can deploy HTML5 apps (by which I mean HTML/JavaScript/CSS), such as those made with PhoneGap, to the App Store, Android Market, and others. I do not want to debate the specifics of every case but there is no reason that an end-user even has to be aware that the developer used HTML5 as the platform.

The major advantage of HTML5 is that you only have to write one app. If I launch a start-up that requires mobile client apps I can write a half-dozen clients (one for each platform) or basically just one with HTML5. I might write a native client for my preferred platform and hit the rest with HTML5 even if my long-term strategy is native everywhere. That is simple expediency and management of scarce resources. The broad reach of HTML5 is a major advantage so stop saying it does not have any. For non-mobile apps, the whole fact that you do not have to deploy anything to reach a customer is another simply gigantic win.

I agree that the tools to develop HTML5 are not as mature. They are improving though and you can even get integration local storage, devices like GPS or camera, and other niceties. The whole point of things like B2G and Gaia is to blur the lines between what is possible with HTML5 and native. Not everybody wants to be an innovator but there are some rewards for doing so.

Now, I am not claiming HTML5 is a panacea. I further your point by admitting that, today in mobile, I prefer native apps both as a developer and a user. If I wrote them all, every app might follow this strategy:

http://blog.xamarin.com/2012/02/24/mwc_2012/

I also think that, in general, the best apps will always be native. I think that is possibly part of your point when you say "no good positive selling points" for HTML5. The thing is, there are other ways to differentiate your apps other than using every platform specific feature. Sometimes the differentiation has nothing to do with the app at all. The Kindle app for iPad is HTML5. Not only is it quite good but it would have to be truly terrible not to get used. People use it because they want to use Amazon not because of some exhaustive evaluation of similar apps.

I actually think it is pretty likely that MOST apps might eventually be written in HTML5. Certainly this has already happened on the desktop to a large extent. It will be the one platform pretty much every developer is guaranteed to know and that every device is certain to host. Unless you are doing something special, the question will be why giving up the benefits of HTML5 will be worth going native. The question is not "why HTML5" but rather "why not".

Or not. Time will tell.

What's the point?

Posted Mar 1, 2012 19:50 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

I also think that, in general, the best apps will always be native. I think that is possibly part of your point when you say "no good positive selling points" for HTML5.

Not for HTML5. For B2G. I'm skeptical about the whole HTML5 hoopla, too, but there I can at least see some sense: write once, run everywhere, third time the charm (failure number one, failure number two). Well, may be. Who knows. I'm skeptical, but I see the point. B2G, on the other hand. Nope. Not yet, at least.

I actually think it is pretty likely that MOST apps might eventually be written in HTML5. Certainly this has already happened on the desktop to a large extent.

Hardly. Most desktop applications I'm seeing are written with traditional technologies - be it Civilization V, MS Office 2010 or even MS Visual Studio. XULRunner, Air and others flopped spectacularly. If you are talking about success of in-browser app, then these are popular for totally different reason: this is the way to create of "try-before-you'll-trust-it" application (traditional desktop app can do anything it wants with your computer while in-browser app can be run [relatively] safely even if you don't trust the author). Both Android and iOS offer non-HTML5-based solutions for this problem on mobile this this insanely huge advantage does not exist in mobile world.

Unless you are doing something special, the question will be why giving up the benefits of HTML5 will be worth going native.

What benefits? Try-before-buy is available on mobile without HTML5 inconvenience and as I already wrote history shows that cross-platform solutions remain popular only for a short time till the winning platform emerges.

But well, it's hard to see what happens: perhaps HTML5 will indeed reach critical mass before winning platform will be determined - who knows? The problem: even if I suspend my disbelief and agree to temporarily believe in widespread HTML5 technology adoption (widespread, not ubiquitous! there are a limits for how much I can suspend my disbelief) I still can not see what's the selling point of B2G.

What's the point?

Posted Mar 1, 2012 21:27 UTC (Thu) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link]

>> Unless you are doing something special, the question will be why giving up the benefits of HTML5 will be worth going native.

> What benefits? Try-before-buy is available on mobile without HTML5 inconvenience

iOS apps are not sandboxed, they are manually inspected by App Store people for malware and so forth. So you do have try-before-buy on iOS, but only because the App Store is curated. And curation is a problem as many developers have found, with Apple reviewers being slow or arbitrary in their decisions. Lack of curation is an advantage of HTML5.

> and as I already wrote history shows that cross-platform solutions remain popular only for a short time till the winning platform emerges.

I would argue the exact opposite. In the beginning, native apps win easily because native app platforms can be created and innovated with quickly. Later, standards-based cross-platform solutions appear, that eventually fill in the gaps between them and native apps, and then the benefits of being standards-based and cross-platform win out.

For example, we all used to use native mail apps once upon a time. Today, most of us use HTML5 webmail.

What's the point?

Posted Mar 1, 2012 22:19 UTC (Thu) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link]

For example, we all used to use native mail apps once upon a time. Today, most of us use HTML5 webmail.

I'm curious if you have any pointers to data that supports this claim. You may well be right, but I would be a bit surprised. Around here (University environment) nearly everyone uses either a university- or gmail- based mail service. But they use native-mail-app-of-choice via IMAP or Exchange, not a web interface. Or maybe you were only thinking of smart phone Email access?

What's the point?

Posted Mar 1, 2012 22:31 UTC (Thu) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link]

Well, data is hard to come by, if someone uses "gmail" then I assume they are using the webmail interface, but they can be using it through IMAP and a standalone client. Likewise if someone uses "outlook" then it might be the native client, or it could be the outlook HTML interface.

Personally, I don't think I know anyone that *doesn't* use gmail with it's web interface. The exceptions are yahoo and hotmail, also with their web interfaces.

Best data I can find is that gmail, hotmail and yahoo mail each have >300M users [1]. It's harder to measure usage of native email clients.

http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/metrics/email-stat...