18 Carriers Sign Up for Firefox OS Phones 107
Several readers sent word of a Mozilla announcement that 18 carriers have committed to launching phones running Firefox OS. The carriers are primarily from markets in South America and Europe. They include Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, and Sprint. The devices running Firefox OS will be made by LG, ZTE, Huawei, and Alcatel, and all will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset. The new mobile operating system is built to allow HTML5 apps to run directly on the device, a solution Mozilla thinks will give it an edge when playing catch-up to all the software available for Android and iOS devices. "Developers are busy and don't have time to learn a new programming language. We believe that the only remaining eco-system is the web and there are more developers for the web than for any other platform in the world," said Jay Sullivan. According to Reuters, "Mozilla will initially look to compete in so-called 'emerging economies' in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia, where many people still use older phone models and have yet to upgrade to more expensive smartphones that feature touchscreens and high-speed Internet connections."
Why is there so much interest in Firefox OS ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Unless this is baseless hype, but still, I'm seeing a lot about this one OS.
I understand operators not wanting to be beholden to an iOS-Android duopoly, but why pick Firefox as the 3rd player ? Are there no other reasonnably OSS, reasonably good, more proven mobile OSes ? MS, RIM, Bada are proprietary, but what about Meego, Tizen, even Ubuntu ? Why not just fork Android ?
Clearly, it works? (Score:5, Interesting)
Developers are busy and don't have time to learn a new programming language. We believe that the only remaining eco-system is the web and there are more developers for the web than for any other platform in the world
You know where I've heard this before, almost word-for-word? It was how HTML5/JS Metro apps were pitched for Win8 on the BUILD conference two years ago.
And before that, it's what RIM has been saying about HTML5 apps for Playbook.
And before that, it was the killer feature of WebOS.
And, as we all know, all of the above are shining examples of a healthy app ecosystem, with thousands of useful, well-written, fast apps in their stores. Right?
Less is more (Score:4, Interesting)
While I'm usually not fond of "web apps", the Firefox OS way of doing web only means you never deal with native apps. Many posts seem to lament this but this lack of a native ecosystem actually is something good for me : I don't want to maintain yet another computer, and be "forced" to carry it 24/7, and I don't want to lock myself into either existing "app" ecosystem. Even if a lock-in to e.g. the Android platform is not a very strong one, it's still a lock-in and has its own complexities (Android 2.x vs 4.x, ARM vs x86, Google app store vs sideloaded apps).
I actually have no smartphone, If I get a Firefox one it would be my first one. And who cares if I check mail or take text notes etc. in some web interface instead of a native application? I've only ever used webmail anyway, since about 2001. I wouldn't have any strong performance requirements (I am not interested in 3D games on a device that doesn't even have suitable controls) and I think low end smartphones will at least have a single core 1.x GHz CPU, be it MIPS, ARM or x86 and those will be enough to deal with the inefficiencies of running a card game on javascript and showing me pictures and maps in a web browser.
addons would make things interesting.... (Score:2, Interesting)
adblock, noscript, greasemonkey......... ;p