Weekly Edition
Return to the Announcements page
| |||||||||||||
Mozilla announces 18 carriers supporting Firefox OS
Mozilla has announced
that eighteen carriers have "committed" to Firefox OS. "The breadth
of operators now backing Mozilla’s Firefox OS demonstrates significant
industry support for a fully-adaptable, unconstrained mobile platform.The
first wave of Firefox OS devices will be available to consumers in Brazil,
Colombia, Hungary, Mexico, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Spain and
Venezuela. Additional markets will be announced soon." Handsets
will be made by Alcatel, Huawei, LG, and ZTE.
(Log in to post comments)
Mozilla announces 18 carriers supporting Firefox OS Posted Feb 25, 2013 0:32 UTC (Mon) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]
Why do carriers need to be involved at all? Surely the hardware manufacturers and Mozilla developers are all that is needed to make Firefox OS?
Mozilla announces 18 carriers supporting Firefox OS Posted Feb 25, 2013 0:48 UTC (Mon) by hadrons123 (guest, #72126) [Link]
This OS practically tries to replace all the dumb phones. Mozilla is playing the game in lower sections where manufacturing of the hardware is really a concern. They just want to eat the left over pie from android and apple. Maybe if they win they might escalate into competing with Google and apple. I think its a good strategy on paper. but only time will answer if its really worth it.
Mozilla announces 18 carriers supporting Firefox OS Posted Feb 25, 2013 5:38 UTC (Mon) by hadrons123 (guest, #72126) [Link]
Correction:
Mozilla is playing the game in lower sections where manufacturing of the hardware is *hardly* a concern.
Painfully obvious truths Posted Feb 25, 2013 22:39 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] only time will answer if its really worth it.It depends on the quality of the platform and the features it offers. They have a clear advantage over Android: less layers on top of the hardware, and technology moves so fast that it is always working for the low end scavengers (i.e.: a €200 phone can do more today than a €600 phone two years ago). But they also have a lot of hurdles: not the least that all platforms that have moved towards javascript have failed in the marketplace (or are in the process of failing). Will they be able to offer a complete OS that people want, when they are still bleeding users on the desktop -- which is a much simpler product? I would like them to, but I have serious doubts.
Painfully obvious truths Posted Feb 25, 2013 23:22 UTC (Mon) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
Those stats seem…off. Ars Technica reports[1] (via Net Marketshare) much rosier numbers for Firefox (at least compared to non-IE browsers). What is GS not counting that it's missing quite a chunk of the IE numbers NM counts?
[1]http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/int...
Painfully obvious truths Posted Feb 26, 2013 9:12 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] The user base for StatCounter is probably quite different than for the Ars Technica article. For starters, the author of the article you link is "a Microsoft Contributor at Ars"; I am not surprised that he would manage to find good numbers for IE.Anyway, what matters for the argument is the tendency in market share: Firefox is dwindling while Chrome is improving.
Painfully obvious truths Posted Feb 26, 2013 16:16 UTC (Tue) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
And the difference in user base is what I want to know. Does SC ignore business? Does NM not count enough on Facebook? There's *quite* a difference and I'd like to know why. If it's bias, fine, but it'd still be interesting to see how that bias is being made.
In any case, the comments on his articles have indicated that he's actually pretty rough on Microsoft, not a blind follower (I don't read a lot of his stuff; mostly just the ones about changes to the dev environment since I use it at work).
The numbers Are has gotten over time showed Chrome catching Firefox, but both have pretty much flat lined in the past few months.
Painfully obvious truths Posted Feb 26, 2013 18:52 UTC (Tue) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
> the author of the article you link is "a Microsoft Contributor at Ars"; I am not surprised that he would manage to find good numbers for IE
While I agree that different websites can have vastly different distributions of browsers I am disappointed in your unsupported assertion that just because someone writes news about Microsoft that they have lied about the browser distribution numbers. I think Ars has a little more journalistic integrity than that. I know it is fashionable to make these kind of serious accusations in a completely off-hand manner but it provides a confusing and inaccurate picture of the world, making it more difficult to pick out and recognize the real biases, by using rational, logical thought.
I wish more people learned rhetoric so that they were better equipped to spot BS and didn't fall back to using such inaccurate methods.
Painfully obvious truths Posted Feb 26, 2013 19:24 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Sorry to have offended your sense of (journalistic?) integrity, but really? If people did indeed learn rhetoric they might spot a glaring appeal to authority in your comment, and that is the whole basis of your analysis. You give no explanation about the biases; in fact you make it look like Ars data might be accurate while StatCounter might be off.At the very least you may look at some other independent market share analysis, from the first page of Google results for browser market share: Wikimedia foundation, w3schools, Clicky. None of them are even close to the ones from NetMarketshare. To answer another commenter, apparently there is a big difference in methodology between NetMarketshare and StatCounter. Personally I think that the methodology of NetMarketshare is atrocious; basing your research on the CIA factbook to make up for missing data looks like a bad idea. The discrepancy would mean that IE users surf the net about 3 to 4 times less than Chrome users, which is odd and a bit demeaning. Picking NetMarketshare data to report looks like a pro-Microsoft bias at best (from Ars or from the reporter), and plain old ignorance at worst. If you have any other enlightening views about why the bias, please let us know. Finally, given that I was talking about dwindling Firefox market share, which is confirmed by all sets of data, this is a very unnecessary discussion, entertaining as it may be.
Painfully obvious truths Posted Feb 26, 2013 20:56 UTC (Tue) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
Thanks for the links; they're some interesting reading. I'll have to send an email to Ars asking why they use NetMarketshare (and maybe do a piece comparing them with StatCounter). The weighting based on the CIA factbook seems, to me, to indicate that IE is used more heavily in less connected countries (since they get pulled up). And yes, it is weird to weight your data, but, IMO, no less weird than just ignoring missing data (which would seem to be what SC does). At least they both are
> If you have any other enlightening views about why the bias, please let us know.
I suppose if and when Ars does a NM/SC comparison article would help with this.
> Finally, given that I was talking about dwindling Firefox market share, which is confirmed by all sets of data, this is a very unnecessary discussion, entertaining as it may be.
Well, seeing as my comment spawned this subthread, I agree that Firefox isn't looking strong in any of these datasets. I was more surprised at the difference between the stats I had seen before. Plus, it's not like I have much of a horse in the race as a developer of Uzbl (which will forever be relegated to a fraction of "Other").
Painfully obvious truths Posted Feb 26, 2013 21:03 UTC (Tue) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
> ...indicate that IE is used more heavily in less connected countries...
This makes sense. IE is already on the machine, Firefox (or any other browser) will need bandwidth (i.e. time) to download.
If you don't really need it, and surfing the web is slow and painful in any case, why bother?
Painfully obvious truths Posted Feb 26, 2013 21:03 UTC (Tue) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
> I suppose if and when Ars does a NM/SC comparison article would help with this.
They usually compare the third party aggregate stats with their own site stats which are often wildly different, much less IE, way more Firefox.
Painfully obvious truths Posted Feb 26, 2013 23:15 UTC (Tue) by Lennie (subscriber, #49641) [Link]
OK, I'm replying at the bottom of this thread in the hope that most of you subscribed to notifications all get this reply.
Most of the time you see 2 organisations quoted in news articles for statistics.
gs.statcounter.com and marketshare.hitslink.com
hitslink always has a much higher IE-share than statcounter, there are several reasons for that that I know of:
1. hitslink seems to be on more business oriented, IE is bigger in business than at home (just look at statcounter and compare the numbers for weekday and weekend).
2. IE is still bigger in China than in western countries. The country with the largest share of Windows XP is also China I believe. Probably Google isn't such a household name in China as their searchengine does not have a large share. A large part of Chrome users are Chrome users because of Google advertising and them being a household name. The reason China is significant for the statistics is because hitslink mangles their statistics based by adding a weight based on the number of people in a country. And China is a really large country.
3. statcounter measures by pageviews and hitslink counts by 'visit' (per session of pageviews). IE users are the 'dumber' users, users that don't know alternatives exist or how to install new software. My guess is these are users which visit a whole lot less pages per website. Chrome and Firefox users click much faster thus visit more pages.
Counting the missing Posted Feb 26, 2013 22:44 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Well, that explains it. I would argue that counting the browsers of people who don't browse is useless and even misleading. But ignoring missing data which you don't have and you don't really know how much it is worth, is wise. It would be like trying to guess what browser would have all those people that do not have computers, if they bought computers -- and adding them to the stats.
Counting the missing Posted Feb 26, 2013 23:07 UTC (Tue) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
I suppose I should have been more clear: it's weird in the sense that there are no error bars on anything. One tries to compensate for the missing data errors while the other says "what we have is good enough". Neither approach is fundamentally good or bad under difference circumstances. SC has a much larger base versus NM based on site counts, so NM has to make up the difference somehow to make as strong an argument.
Painfully obvious truths Posted Feb 26, 2013 10:05 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] They have a clear advantage over Android: less layers on top of the hardware, and technology moves so fast that it is always working for the low end scavengers (i.e.: a €200 phone can do more today than a €600 phone two years ago). It's clear, but diminishing advantage. Every year memory becomes cheaper and cheaper and other components (screen, battery, etc) are kept on the same level. Cheapest Android 4.0 phones (and Android 4.0 is more resource-hungry then Android 2.x) are well below $100 unsubsidized already. How much down can Firefox OS push the envelope? How much will it matter?
Painfully obvious truths Posted Feb 26, 2013 10:36 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Less than $100 with Android 4.0? I have not found any, all those sub-$100 phones run 2.3.Which points to another issue with Android (and potentially its worst nightmare): the enormous fragmentation caused by manufacturers still shipping 2.3. Right now 2.x has more than 45% share to this day, when 4.0 was launched more than a year ago. It is much easier for Firefox OS to compete against 2.3 than against the latest and greatest 4.2!
Painfully obvious truths Posted Feb 26, 2013 10:52 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Less than $100 with Android 4.0? I have not found any, all those sub-$100 phones run 2.3. Really?. Here is the first link, here is the second… It is much easier for Firefox OS to compete against 2.3 than against the latest and greatest 4.2! Well, if FirefoxOS will reach shops in the second part of the 2013 it'll be competing against Android 4.2, not against Android 2.3. Of course most likely Android 4.2 will not be "latest and greatest" by then.
Painfully obvious truths Posted Feb 26, 2013 14:09 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] OK, let me restate: I have not found any sub-$100 phones on Amazon or local retailers, and I am not willing to risk buying a cheap unbranded phone direct from China. (Although I hear that some of those sub-€100 tablets are not bad at all.) In this (admittedly exquisite) of branded, guaranteed category there are no 4.0 ICS phones yet.The segmentation problem means that in Q4 2013 there will be almost as many Android 2.3 phones on sale as there are now, and that is a real pity. Just look at this chart and extrapolate: Android version renewal is getting slower as time goes by, not faster.
Painfully obvious truths Posted Feb 26, 2013 15:23 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
I've seen sub-$100 Android phones in CVS and Safeway in the US. Near stands with various phone cards.
Mozilla announces 18 carriers supporting Firefox OS Posted Feb 25, 2013 0:49 UTC (Mon) by boog (subscriber, #30882) [Link]
"Why do carriers need to be involved at all?"
To sell the phones:
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2013/01/earl...
Mozilla announces 18 carriers supporting Firefox OS Posted Feb 25, 2013 13:16 UTC (Mon) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
I think this pundit might be just as wrong as the people they're criticising.
The situation where the operators are gatekeepers ceased to have any technical significance (e.g. frequency compatibility) some years ago in almost all regions. For a period after that it continued because the operators had set things up so that you couldn't get competitive prices without buying the telephone and the service together at the same time (from the same greasy salesperson who gets a cut). Now it exists only by tradition, and that's very fragile.
Mozilla announces 18 carriers supporting Firefox OS Posted Feb 25, 2013 14:02 UTC (Mon) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
Everyone likes to criticise Tomi Ahonen, but he always makes very good points. One important point about relationships with carriers/operators is that if you have their support, you have their promotion of your products, and the operator is for a large proportion of customers - especially those wanting high-end products - where they will be buying those products.
Where I live there is a lot more television or billboard advertising for operators than there is by the likes of Apple, Samsung or Nokia, although Samsung have certainly spent a tidy sum, and a lot of that advertising features actual handsets and not (or not merely) details of various plans. It wouldn't surprise me if various adverts that I thought were Samsung ones were actually ones for operators albeit with some Samsung money involved. Indeed, between the different operators, there isn't much to choose between when it comes to plans, so it's mostly a game of name recognition and showing a nice gadget next to your logo.
Forgetting the frequency compatibility argument because that surely hasn't been particularly relevant in most markets for a decade or two, the tradition of buying from operators is sustained by things like convenience and easy finance: you get a new phone in one transaction and you can persuade yourself that it didn't cost you very much (or that you would rather live with the deferred costs). The fragile part of the operators' power is the part where they tell the manufacturers what to put in each product, but the more sensible operators will have already figured out by now to just shut up and take the money (for the superfluous services being offered to the punters that they will never fully use).
Mozilla announces 18 carriers supporting Firefox OS Posted Feb 25, 2013 20:31 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] For a period after that it continued because the operators had set things up so that you couldn't get competitive prices without buying the telephone and the service together at the same time (from the same greasy salesperson who gets a cut). Over 90% of buyers still buy mobile phone from the same greasy salesperson who gets a cut. Sure by now it's not just carriers shops, but also independent ones (like Apple Shops, for example), but without carriers these shops will not be able to offer you phone with a SIM card and this will exclude majority of buyers. Now, it's true that you don't need all the carriers on board but you need at least some and, more importantly, you don't need carriers which will actively block sales of your phone (as happens with Windows Phone after Microsoft's Skype buyout).
SIM Posted Feb 26, 2013 0:00 UTC (Tue) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
"without carriers these shops will not be able to offer you phone with a SIM card and this will exclude majority of buyers."
Huh? Getting the SIM with the phone mattered twenty years ago when people were buying their first mobile phone. But everyone has a phone now. The SIM is a removable component. You buy a new phone, you take the SIM out of the old phone (and then sell, recycle, or scrap it) and put it in the new phone.
I actually doubt your "over 90%" figure anyway, and I'd like to see where you got it from. A lot of the world's subscribers aren't using an operator that even has such stores, it's cheap to set up a "virtual" operator which has no substantial physical presence, just a unique identifier and a website to sell SIMs. Maybe you put up a Polish site and you sell into the UK. You pay the UK operators for coverage, you bulk-buy capacity to Poland and your subscribers get a fixed rate deal to call home, plus customer service in their first language. No overhead for storefronts, no engineering effort to pointlessly "rebrand" things people don't want branded in the first place, just a nice service for a healthy profit. Add those up worldwide and it's hard to see where your 90% fits. FWIW I have _never_ heard anyone who uses such a service lamenting the difficulty of buying a handset, it just isn't an issue.
SIM Posted Feb 26, 2013 10:17 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] You buy a new phone, you take the SIM out of the old phone (and then sell, recycle, or scrap it) and put it in the new phone. Yes, but where do you buy that shiny new phone? In the shop which pissed the carriers off and now can't offer your contract with your new phone? Works for 2%, 3%, may be 5% of geeks, does not work for the majority of users. I actually doubt your "over 90%" figure anyway, and I'd like to see where you got it from. It's from 2011 and it was 98% back then. I think situation is slightly different today, but not that much different. A lot of the world's subscribers aren't using an operator that even has such stores, it's cheap to set up a "virtual" operator which has no substantial physical presence, just a unique identifier and a website to sell SIMs. What does it change? You pay the UK operators for coverage, you bulk-buy capacity to Poland and your subscribers get a fixed rate deal to call home, plus customer service in their first language. This is great business plan but it only works till real UK carriers tolerate you business. And there are only handful of them, it's not that hard to piss them all off. Then your business will fly like lead balloon. As I've said: you need at least some operators on your side. Not all of them. But without at least some — you are dead. That's why I was extremely skeptical about FirefoxOS last year and I'm still skeptical about Ubuntu.
SIM Posted Feb 26, 2013 10:41 UTC (Tue) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] If you want a brand new SIM-free phone, you buy it from a high street retailer (just-a-phone: £15; webphone: £40; qwertyphone: £60; Android phone: £80; PAYG SIM with £10 of credit: £10), or from that high street retailer's online mail order operation, or from the supermarket.
SIM Posted Feb 26, 2013 10:55 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] And all these outlets sign deals with carriers anyway. Sure, if you are established player it'll be few years till carriers will can actually you (see Nokia) but for the new player carriers support is vital (see Palm's webOS).
SIM Posted Mar 2, 2013 3:10 UTC (Sat) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
"And all these outlets sign deals with carriers anyway."
Er, no. What would the deal even say? You have to carry only certain brands of device in exchange for a pile of cash? That would be a magnet for regulatory oversight.
SIM Posted Mar 13, 2013 20:48 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Are you really that naive or just stupid? Contract says just what percentage dealer keeps to itself, nothing more, nothing less. It does not need to say anything else: people who don't know how to read between lines are getting the most unfavourable contracts and are quickly weeded out. Even better: you can just refuse to sell some "special limited deals" via this outlet (which makes it quite unattractive but is completely regulatory oversight-free because these deals are special and are limited). Retail outlets play the favorites games with carriers and carriers play the same game back. Few dealers will risk carriers ire if they don't know if something will attract buyers or not: you lose the money and for what? For something with no track record? Yes, some small ones will eventually try everything (before going completely bust) and then, if thing will indeed attract buyers more respectable ones will risk selling it, too. Eventually the highly-desired features arrive at most shops even if carriers oppose them (think dual-SIM models), but this takes years. And FirefoxOS does not have years: window of opportunity is slowly but surely closes. It's already mostly closed and in 2-3 years it'll be gone.
SIM Posted Apr 5, 2013 21:57 UTC (Fri) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
The "read between the lines" thing has been done. It gets you prosecuted. Sure, you can make deals that could see senior management jailed or fines larger than your 10 year profits. I don't know why you'd do that, it seems like terrible risk management to me, but you can do that. Remember that if your plan is to use this to punish people who disobey you that means you're deliberately creating an army of people who know you've broken the law and probably aren't too happy about it. I don't know, that seems kinda dumb.
I am reminded of people telling me how "clever" they are to avoid capital controls (e.g. the US Federal government sees all 5+ digit US$ transfers out of the country). They do it by moving many smaller transactions. Too bad, evading capital controls in this way ("smurfing") is a serious criminal offence AND provides investigators with a good reason to go through your life with a fine tooth comb to figure out why you had so much money you didn't want them to see.
But my point was more fundamental than that. The retailer doesn't want any sort of contract, they keep 100% of the sale price of the phone already. They don't care about the service provider and its contracts, written in invisible ink or otherwise. Tomi is telling you about the US model, which is doubtless fascinating if your concern is solely the US, but when he tries to stretch to the rest of the world he resorts to hand waving. The 98% number you seem to be trying to rely on is hand waving. Tomi doesn't have such a number, it's as if he talked about an "800lb gorilla" - gorillas aren't actually so heavy as that, it's just a figure of speech.
Mozilla announces 18 carriers supporting Firefox OS Posted Mar 14, 2013 2:06 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]
Not on CDMA carriers, it's not.
Mozilla announces 18 carriers supporting Firefox OS Posted Feb 26, 2013 7:35 UTC (Tue) by MortenSickel (subscriber, #3238) [Link]
"To sell the phones:"
maybe in the US - in most of the rest of the world we buy phones and SIMs independently.
Mozilla announces 18 carriers supporting Firefox OS Posted Feb 26, 2013 10:28 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] It changes situation only marginally. Most shops which sells phones all around the world still sell you both phones and SIMs (even if they don't sell them as package). To sell SIMs you need to keep good relationship with carriers. That's why for years dual SIM phones were sold only in shady places, not in the large shops. People wanted them and eventually most manufacturers have gotten them. Then and after then they started to appear in respectable shops. And even still they are never flagmans because this will not fly without carriers support.
Mozilla announces 18 carriers supporting Firefox OS Posted Feb 25, 2013 20:21 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Why do carriers need to be involved at all? Surely the hardware manufacturers and Mozilla developers are all that is needed to make Firefox OS? Sure. If your goal is to create new generation of Neo FreeRunner then that's all that you need. Now, if you want to actually sell your devices carriers are vital. Carriers and carriers-affiliated sales control most sales of mobile phones - without them your platform is stillborn. Nokia witnessed it first-hand: it had the best relationship with carriers in the world (except for US) and sold more smartphones then number two and number three combined (number two and number three were Apple and RIM back then). Then Elop pissed them off and now Nokia is barely number ten. Carriers can not push broken mobile platform (buyers will still spurn it given the alternative) but they absolutely can kill any platform they don't like. This means that now Firefox OS has a fighting chance. Not a large chance (I'm still not sure how they want to attract buyers), but at least a chance.
Mozilla announces 18 carriers supporting Firefox OS Posted Feb 26, 2013 3:52 UTC (Tue) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]
Er, all you guys need to get out of the US now and then. Nokia had declined to near-zero in the US long before Elop took over, but it was still the largest seller in the rest of the world, where we buy phones from hardware vendors and SIMs from carriers. That Nokia subsequently declined has absolutely zero to do with their relationship with carriers: it's solely because their OS didn't cut it any more.
Mozilla announces 18 carriers supporting Firefox OS Posted Feb 26, 2013 10:24 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Nokia had declined to near-zero in the US long before Elop took over, but it was still the largest seller in the rest of the world, where it had the best carrier relations in the world. Elop killed it — and now Nokia is dead. If you have carriers on your side — you are the kind (Nokia in the most of the world), if you pissed them off (Nokia in US) — you are dead. Yes, that's my point. What's your point? That Nokia subsequently declined has absolutely zero to do with their relationship with carriers: it's solely because their OS didn't cut it any more. Let's see: Nokia has crappy OS and phones (latest models of Symbian flagmans were one fiasco after another) and great relationship with carriers == Nokia is king of the smartphones, Nokia has crappy OS (yes, Windows Phone is crappy, that's true) and it pissed of carriers == Nokia is dead. And you still want to say that carriers relationship does not matter ? Sorry, does not compute.
Mozilla announces 18 carriers supporting Firefox OS Posted Feb 26, 2013 10:47 UTC (Tue) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] I believe you should read your own links before posting them. From your article (which I've seen before):In many countries the phones are sold with subsidies, tied to two-year contracts. (Some readers will be surprised to find this is not the case for the majority of the world, where people pay full retail price for their handsets - ie 600 dollars for the iPhone - upfront, but then are not locked to two-year contracts and get far cheaper phone services obviously).It is that "majority of the world" where Nokia dominated till recently and still sells quite respectably. It is because of the quality of their hardware. You got battery life of several days, sunlight-readable screens, and you could drop it from the first floor and it would still work. (First floor = floor above ground floor)
Mozilla announces 18 carriers supporting Firefox OS Posted Feb 26, 2013 10:58 UTC (Tue) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]
PS -- yes, the guy does claim, despite the quote above, that Nokia's relation with carriers was key. He says, as far as I can tell, that this is because carrier "support" is needed even when (as in the majority of cases) you buy the handset separately. This is simply not true. First, the market is flooded with cheap no-name Chinese handsets, all of which work fine; people don't think of checking with the carrier first. Second, even today, nobody will even consider questioning whether Nokia will be supported, and no carrier will decline to support Nokia.
Mozilla announces 18 carriers supporting Firefox OS Posted Feb 26, 2013 11:13 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] First, the market is flooded with cheap no-name Chinese handsets, all of which work fine But which still occupy less then 30% of the market. Note that Nokia in 2010 (before it broke relationship with carriers) had 40% while today it has less then 20%. Second, even today, nobody will even consider questioning whether Nokia will be supported, and no carrier will decline to support Nokia. It's one thing to decline to support Nokia bought by a geek from some website (even US carriers are not that bold!), it's totally different thing to decline to support Nokia sales pitch. Carriers did that in the last two years and Nokia went from about "40%" to "about 25%" and now to "less then 20%". And in smartphones (where they went from active support to boycott) it went from 34% to 5%. Yes, if you are the market leader even carriers can't kill you quickly. But if you are not… it's different story.
Mozilla announces 18 carriers supporting Firefox OS Posted Feb 26, 2013 11:00 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] It is that "majority of the world" where Nokia dominated till recently and still sells quite respectably. Only because Samsung abandoned this segment entirely. It looks like Samsung have finally decided to seal Nokia's coffin, though. We'll see how it'll work.
Mozilla announces 18 carriers supporting Firefox OS Posted Feb 26, 2013 11:06 UTC (Tue) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]
Er, Samsung sells phones at all price points, and has for a while now. Here in India they've sold cheap phones for years, but only recently have they improved in perception of quality (having captured the high-end market). The cheaper Samsungs didn't run Android until recently, but now they have quite inexpensive Android phones too. But yes, there is plenty of room at the bottom of the market, where the cheap Chinese guys have invaded.
Nokia's Asha mystifies me -- their OS is *worse* than Symbian S60 in many ways (notably, they don't support multitasking, so you can't listen to music and surf the web at the same time -- a thing my 3-year-old Nokia E63 does comfortably.)
Mozilla announces 18 carriers supporting Firefox OS Posted Feb 26, 2013 11:18 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Here in India Ah, now I see why your worldview is so skewed. In effect you are just as biased as US citizens, just in the opposite direction: in India there are so many carriers that few can seriously affect the market. Both US (where carriers more-or-less control everything) and India (where they have very small power) are an exceptions. Most of the world lies between these two opposite points. But yes, there is plenty of room at the bottom of the market, where the cheap Chinese guys have invaded. Apparently not enough to keep Nokia from losses now when it no longer has carrier's support.
Mozilla announces 18 carriers supporting Firefox OS Posted Feb 25, 2013 7:10 UTC (Mon) by jimmyj (guest, #89388) [Link]
Firefox OS! Let's face the facts: Google is evil, Microsoft is evil, Apple is evil. How about you clueless morons start using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)? I guess a 4th grade education isn't enough? Firefox OS!
Mozilla announces 18 carriers supporting Firefox OS Posted Feb 25, 2013 12:59 UTC (Mon) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
Fyi, this is not slashdot.org or phoronix.com.
No more Posted Feb 25, 2013 13:27 UTC (Mon) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] Your account has posted four comments now, and they are all trolls like this. May I ask you please to stop? This isn't the place for that kind of behavior.
Mozilla announces 18 carriers supporting Firefox OS Posted Feb 25, 2013 13:31 UTC (Mon) by heijo (guest, #88363) [Link]
Google is sometimes mischievous, Microsoft is somewhat bad, and Apple (along with Oracle) is Satan's front company on Earth.
Mozilla is unfortunately funded by Google, but appears to be mostly fine.
So, yes, let's hope Firefox OS succeeds!
Sooooooo, what does committed mean? Posted Feb 27, 2013 1:36 UTC (Wed) by liam (subscriber, #84133) [Link]
To my knowledge no carrier has actually "committed" to selling these phones. The only real commitments I've seen are from OEMs.
As an aside, I find it hilarious that instead of working with cairo to improve performance, Firefox moved to Azure since that maps so well with direct2d. However, with FFOS, where they really do need great 2d performance, they can't make use of advantages azure provides.
graphics API performance Posted Feb 28, 2013 21:59 UTC (Thu) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link]
Azure isn't better because it maps more cleanly to D2D, it's better because a mostly-stateless API is just better. Skia and D2D recognized this which is why their APIs are mostly-stateless. Ironically cairo's internal surface API is also mostly-stateless.
We've done a ton of work over the years to improve cairo performance, especially on non-Linux platforms, but the problems caused by the stateful cairo_t API are not fixable without drastically altering the API, breaking API compatibility so the result wouldn't be cairo anymore.
At some point I'd like to try binding Azure to the cairo internal surface API when we build with in-tree cairo. That could be a big win.
graphics API performance Posted Mar 2, 2013 2:14 UTC (Sat) by liam (subscriber, #84133) [Link]
Here's my main reference (http://blog.mozilla.org/joe/2011/04/26/introducing-the-az...), though this (http://www.basschouten.com/blog1.php/comparing-performanc...) is more too do with D2D.
I think your stateless/stateful position is arguable (after all, quartz, canvas, evas, and cairo are all stateful), but I won't argue here:)
|
|||||||||||||
