Mozilla Puts An End To Firefox OS

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Mozilla Puts An End To Firefox OS

Mozilla has announced they will stop selling Firefox OS smart-phones and are putting an end to its development...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Mozilla-Stops-Firefox-OS

[mcirsta]

Mozilla have this idea that they can do anything in their browser ... hey let's do an entire mobile OS in the browser. Google kind of likes the idea a bit too but Chrome OS is aimed at devices where the penalty for running things in the browser isn't that big and you can easily run native code in Chrome OS ....
No native apps and offering no real advantage over Android makes me wonder what Mozilla were even thinking. At least they realized it's stupid and killed it. Maybe if they actually invested these resources in making a better Firefox ... support for Linux is still crappy on the Qt, KDE side IMO si I just gave up and switched to Chromium ... way to do Mozilla

[tigerroast]

FirefoxOS was in that purgatory zone between "low-cost Android smartphones" and "dirt-cheap basic phones." I didn't really expect it to really go anywhere besides most most developing countries where the former didn't catch on yet and there was demand for more than the latter. Quite a shame it's dead though.

I highly doubt Ubuntu Phone will have the longevity to compete with Android though. It seems to have been struck by Half-Baked Execution by Canonical syndrome, much like a fair bit of their more-ambitious-than-normal projects they've done (Upstart, Ubuntu TV to name 2). They need to stop trying to be Google and actually focus their efforts on one thing at a time, because Ubuntu Phone's looking a bit butt at the moment.

[raonlinux]

Well it's kinda sad, but anyway now they should all focus the direction on their web browser, also are stopping thunderbird. I hope they keep using the resource they have on something that really make more sense and not a waste of time.
I hope Ubuntu not end the same way, but it looks like this will be the future too.

[abral]

The guy cited in the article said: "we will stop offering Firefox OS smartphones through carrier channels."

[eugene2k]

When Apple came out with its revolutionary iPhone, I bet the executives at Google looked at it and thought, "This is the future. Soon everybody is going to start making their own iPhones. We should make an OS of our own for smartphones, while there are no competitors". When Android became popular, in part because it was free for the manufacturers to put on their phones, Microsoft woke up and went "Oh! Smartphones will be the future!" and started making its next Windows for smartphones. When Windows Phone sales were low, Mozilla and Canonical decided to jump on the bandwagon with their own android-a-likes. Now Windows Phone sales are still low and Mozilla finally realized: they were too late. Canonical hasn't realized it yet, so we're waiting for you Mark!

[Cerberus]

I highly doubt Ubuntu Phone will have the longevity to compete with Android though. It seems to have been struck by Half-Baked Execution by Canonical syndrome, much like a fair bit of their more-ambitious-than-normal projects they've done (Upstart, Ubuntu TV to name 2). They need to stop trying to be Google and actually focus their efforts on one thing at a time, because Ubuntu Phone's looking a bit butt at the moment.

Ubuntu Touch is not trying to compete with Android, Canonical knows that is nearly impossible, what Canonical is trying to do is to provide an open source OS with a new paradigm and abilities like convergence, aimed at geeky users which is quite a large potential user base world wide, yes Microsoft's Continuum will have something similar to convergence but not quite, it is not able to run full desktop applications, Ubuntu Touch will be able to run desktop applications via XMir thus providing full desktop experience. There are already demos of Firefox and Libre Office running on Nexus 4 connected to a monitor. Their strategy is something like this in my opinion, launch the OS for enthusiasts on existing Android phones to cut costs, let them tinker with it and report bugs, improve the OS with time and complete convergence, get the few most popular applications like Viber and WhatsApp ported on Ubuntu Touch and then sell them via carriers. Currently they are in the "improve the OS with time and complete convergence" phase.

I bought the first phone in one of the flash sales and I can tell you they work hard on the OS, the phone improved significantly in the past months with OTAs that come out every 6 weeks. Currently its a pretty comfortable experience using it as my daily phone, when it came out it was buggy and sometimes unstable, now it is no longer so, still needs some work and a few features added but the progress they are making is tangible.

[anarki2]

Shock horror.

[gbcox]

... Maybe if they actually invested these resources in making a better Firefox ... support for Linux is still crappy on the Qt, KDE side IMO si I just gave up and switched to Chromium ... way to do Mozilla

Agree 100%. Firefox has lagged behind Chrome for awhile now... I also use Qt (LXQt now rather than Plasma for reasons that have been previously discussed). I also gave up and switched to Chrome. For better or worse, Chrome is pushing new tech, and has the market share. Firefox needs to accept this reality and at a minimum keep up.

[schmidtbag]

I don't know who thought Firefox OS was a good idea but I'm glad Mozilla is canceling it. What a waste of company resources. It was completely unnecessary to attempt. Mozilla keeps trying to compete with things that nobody is expecting them to do and it's hurting all of their products. They need to hurry up with their planned changes for the Firefox browser. Right now the only major problems with Chrome/Chromium are high memory usage and poor cache management, meanwhile Firefox's issues keep stacking up (particularly for Linux users). I'm just glad that Mozilla can finally shift their developers toward more important things.

As for Ubuntu phone, that does have a niche with the potential to be successful. If done right, you can have a phone and PC all in one, which so far nobody seems to be attempting. I personally don't want something like that, but I can see the appeal. A KDE phone sounds interesting but I don't see it getting anywhere.