Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

Posted Jul 2, 2013 19:58 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS by Quazatron
Parent article: Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

This was tried before. This approach just does not work. Smartphone is well, a phone which is smart. And smarts are added by some additional software (apps, dedicated web sites, etc - does not matter). Creators of said software, strangely enough, want to be paid. And if you target less affluent people then naturally they spend less money. This can be compensated (for example Android with it's 50% is now about as attractive as iOS with it's 20% because it targets slightly less affluent people), but if you only target lowest level of the market then the incentive to create smarts is just not there which in turn means that your smartphone is not all that smart - and then why buy it if you can have more reliable and even cheaper dumbphone?

Nonetheless the phone is out there and this is a start. We'll see how it'll work long term: FirefoxOS has decent carriers support which means it have a fighting chance. Not a large chance, but still...

to post comments

Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

Posted Jul 2, 2013 22:50 UTC (Tue) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link] (2 responses)

What you are saying boils down to:
We need big closed ecosystems that try to recreate the web in apps to be successful.

I don't think that is true. It may be what we end up with, but it is not the best solution.

I don't know how many times I wanted information that is easily available on the desktop web, but on mobile it was hard to get. Sure I could have searched for an app, installed it and then used it for getting that info.
OR I could have gotten it from a good mobile web page .. those often don't exist because we have apps now.

Brave new world!

Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

Posted Jul 4, 2013 13:03 UTC (Thu) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link]

I must be missing something, but in what way is Android a closed ecosystem?

Heilmann: The Fox is out of the bag #FirefoxOS

Posted Jul 7, 2013 10:03 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

We need big closed ecosystems that try to recreate the web in apps to be successful.

You need big ecosystem, period. It does not need to be closed (Linux servers ecosystem is pretty open: even if RHEL plays important role there it's not the only game in town), but needs to be big.

Short-term you can attract developers who hope you'll grow big soon and hope to grab larger piece of smaller ecosystem, but if you are 10 times smaller then other players then it may be better to have 15% there rather then 90% here.

I don't think that is true. It may be what we end up with, but it is not the best solution.

It's the only sustainable solution. Even if someone (e.g. government) will send money to support you (like it was done with FGCS) or you keep some small niche for itself (like Apple did with desktop publishing) long-term you either need to grab larger piece of the pie or you'll die out.

Brave new world!

Yup. I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone. Desktop web moves in the same direction, too: more and more dare are presented as AJAX-driven webapps and the data is given to search engines when and where it's convenient for app writers. Similarly on the phone apps are receiving the ability to plug in "global search" tool. This all converges in more-or-less the same point - the only problem is that point is far, far away from "all information is easily crawlable and accessible" ideal of early web.