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What's the point?What's the point?Posted Mar 8, 2012 12:58 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252)In reply to: What's the point? by KaiRo Parent article: Mozilla announces HTML5-based phone
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).
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What's the point? Posted Mar 9, 2012 9:33 UTC (Fri) by kragil (subscriber, #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 (subscriber, #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.
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