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Where new opportunity lies in the mobile operating system space

Wed, 22 May 2013 06:55:09 +0000

Roughly half a dozen new mobile operating systems will come to market over the next 6 to 12 months. Many of these look to be more sophisticated than the older ones controlled by Apple and Google. This report will examine the most noteworthy of these new operating systems, Blackberry 10, Firefox, Tizen, and others. It will also document their competitive advantages and disadvantages and gauge what their chances of success — or even true disruption — might be.

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The first Firefox OS dev phones are on sale

David Meyer — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 08:07:32 +0000

The developer test phones for Firefox OS are now on sale. They’re being produced by Geeksphone, a small Spanish outfit that used to make Android handsets for true open-source cognoscenti and that is now backing Mozilla’s operating system as the way forward.

Geeksphone is far from the only company pushing Firefox OS – operators seem especially keen, largely because they want to shake up the Google/Apple smartphone duopoly. However, it is the only firm thus far to start selling devices using the operating system (ZTE will also sell Firefox OS phones from around the middle of the year).

Firefox OS’s big differentiator is its treatment of HTML5 web apps as native, which means apps built for this platform should run on other smartphone platforms too.

“With early access to hardware, developers can test the capabilities of Firefox OS in a real environment with a mobile network and true hardware characteristics like the accelerometer and camera that are not easily tested on the Firefox OS Simulator,” Stormy Peters, head of developer engagement at Mozilla, said in a blog post. “Plus, new hardware is fun to play with!”

The two phones – the Keon and the Peak – can be shipped anywhere in the world. The Keon, which costs €91 ($119) plus taxes and which already appears to be sold out, is representative of the kind of hardware that will ship to Firefox OS customers first: 3.5-inch screen, entry-level Qualcomm 1GHz processor and a 3MP camera. This very much targets the low end of the market in regions such as South-East Asia and South America.

The €149 ($194) Peak is more forward-looking in terms of Firefox OS, although the specs will be familiar to those who have scouted out current low-to-mid-range Android handsets: 4.3-inch screen, dual-core Qualcomm 1.2GHz processor and an 8MP camera. Both devices feature 512MB of RAM, 4GB of ROM, MicroSD support and the various sensors you’d expect in a modern smartphone.

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Mozilla CEO: Firefox OS will work because the web is different now

Erica Ogg — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 19:11:01 +0000

This post has been updated with information about Firefox OS’s launch at the request of Mozilla.

Mozilla is just a few months away from releasing its first mobile operating system and it’s still facing lots of skepticism, considering Apple and Google’s domination of the devices out there. Gary Kovacs, Mozilla’s outgoing CEO, defended the company’s move to turn the web into a third mobile operating system, one where people won’t have to choose apps over web content.

He’s fighting public perception that native development for specific platforms isn’t working the way it was initially promised with HTML5 development. Facebook, which famously tried to embrace the open web with its HTML5-based apps, has said that was a mistake and re-embraced native development for iOS and Android. At the Dive into Mobile conference in New York City on Monday, Kovacs said when Facebook tried it the web was different:

“The web is much different today than it was two years ago,” he said. Important things have changed that make it easier for developers to work with the open web, including “much better GPUs on the device, better javascript performance, better APIs,” and more.

Kovacs said offering a third option is in keeping with the company’s ethos of openness, giving more options to more device users (and by definition, carriers). That means going to countries where Apple and Google aren’t as strong: the first Firefox OS devices countries will be where Mozilla and Firefox are known brands, and in the developing world where people are going to be buying their first mobile devices in the next few years. The first launch countries in June are Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Poland and Venezuela, Kovacs said.

The U.S. will eventually get Firefox mobile devices, and Sprint will be a partner — but not until 2014. “We have to get to version 2, version 3 first,” he said.

But whether it’s a developing country or ones with more established mobile consumer bases, Kovacs said he believes it can’t just be about two companies: “It’s impossible for me to beleive 5 billion people [coming online in the next few years] will get the same apps from one [app] store or one ecosystem.”

Update 3:36 p.m. PT: It sounds like Kovacs may have been getting ahead of himself — or at least ahead of the information his company wants to announce. A Mozilla spokesperson asked us to update this post with this statement: “As Mozilla announced on February 24th, the initial countries where Firefox OS devices will be available to consumers are Brazil, Colombia, Hungary, Mexico, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Spain and Venezuela. Exact launch timing is decided by and dependent on our partners.”

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Why Firefox OS may bring balance back to the smartphone industry

David Meyer — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 07:35:13 +0000

Firefox OS is now going to happen. When it was announced a year ago, the carriers said they were in. Now they’re about to prove it: this summer, Telefonica will roll out handsets in Spain, Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia, and Deutsche Telekom and Telenor will do the same in Europe.

But will it succeed? To figure that out, we need to look at a number of variables, including the OS itself, but mainly what it represents for those all-important carriers.

The promised land

From an open standards perspective, the Firefox OS is as pure as it gets right now. The whole thing is based on HTML5 – it’s all about escaping Google and Apple’s walled gardens and frolicking freely in the wilds of the open web. Half the code was written by volunteers.

There will be an official Firefox Marketplace but everyone is free to roll their own, from carriers to games specialists. Any payment method can be implemented – that factor is not in the hands of any one platform sponsor. Apps that run on the platform will also be able to run on rivals that implement HTML5, such as Google’s and Apple’s.

The fact that the carriers are lapping this up represents a moment of supreme irony: these are the same companies – largely former monopolies – that were all about walled gardens, the companies that wanted to replicate the portal-first, AOL model in the wireless world. And what happened to stymie that scenario? Apple happened.

It was the iPhone that really loosened the carriers’ grip on their product. Suddenly they were just providers of voice and SMS and data, not suppliers of value-added services. The revenue cut from app sales now went to Apple and Google, not to the operators. The walls to their gardens had been obliterated, and someone had set up much more attractive walled gardens elsewhere.

So back we come to this idea of the open mobile web. This is an area where luminaries such as Tim Berners-Lee have been on the warpath, pointing out very real problems with the iOS/Android model. These include the inability to share app-based content in a standardized way, and the inability to search across apps. In short: the loss of the level playing field that web technologies represent.

Firefox OS is designed to solve those problems. Weirdly, we can now witness the former walled garden proprietors genuinely extol the virtues of openness. By promoting Firefox OS, they cannot regain control – however, they hope to prise some control from the hands of Google and Apple.

Not convinced? Consider these quotes from Sunday’s Firefox OS launch:

“Operators will benefit from higher control over the mobile ecosystem and consequently will have the opportunity to address specific customers.” – Franco Bernabe, Telecom Italia CEO

“This is a major step to bring balance back to the telco sector. The smartphone market is currently working backwards. [Customers are] not able to take an application from one platform to another. Duopolies are not beneficial for any industry.” – Cesar Alierta, CEO, Telefonica

“Suddenly we have something which is a bit more flexible.” – Jon Fredrick Baksaas, CEO, Telenor

“This is the beginning of the end of walled gardens.” – Marco Quatorze, CMO, America Movil

Will it work?

In Firefox OS’s favor, it comes readily equipped with many apps, including any mobile website written to behave like an app (think Twitter and Facebook). The fact that so many web apps are out there, and that writing one means addressing most mobile platforms at once, means Mozilla may just achieve its stated goal of getting developers to stop migrating to a purely native strategy.

In my brief hands-on experience with a ZTE Firefox OS phone, performance was slightly but not excessively laggy (bear in mind that the software is still not complete). According to the demonstrator, web apps apparently run better on Firefox OS than on other platforms because there’s less overhead – no Dalvik or anything like that. Will they run better than their native equivalents on the latest iOS and Android devices? Doubtful, but that’s not the point.

These initial Firefox OS phones are not powerful. They are sub-$100 handsets that will be going up against Nokia’s Asha range and low-end Android devices from Huawei and ZTE. Given that those cheap Android devices are not equipped to handle everything their platform has to offer, Firefox OS may indeed provide a better experience at that price point. Nokia is the player that’s most likely to get hurt here.

Considering that potential performance advantage and the apparent will of the carriers to promote them, these handsets seem to have a fighting chance in the developing markets where they will first be pitched. I find it hard to see them doing well in more mature smartphone markets, but the performance of the finalized software may prove me wrong.

The question here really is the will of the operators to see Firefox OS succeed. There is every reason to believe they are primarily concerned with wringing concessions out of Google, such as better deals on app revenue share. If they get that, perhaps they will pull back on Mozilla’s open platform.

But even if that happens, and the mobile industry achieves greater balance, well, job done.

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Firefox OS dev phones appear, with Telefonica as the driving force

David Meyer — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 13:24:48 +0000

Europe is not exactly packed with mobile phone manufacturers these days, with the big players in that space now residing in the U.S. and the Far East. Nokia’s still around to some extent and Jolla may or may not gain traction, but there’s not much else round these parts anymore – which is why it’s so interesting to see Spain’s Geeksphone pop up again with developer devices for Mozilla’s new Firefox OS.

Geeksphone has been around for a few years as a minor maker of Android phones, taking things very much from the open-source fan’s standpoint. However – tellingly, perhaps – the company is now singing the praises of the HTML5-based Firefox OS, waxing lyrical about how it “has openness written on its DNA.” And, buoyed by that enthusiasm, it’s producing two test devices for Firefox OS called Keon and Peak, which will be shown off to developers later this month at Telefonica’s Campus Party Brazil.

The Keon is the lower-end device, running a 1GHz Qualcomm 7225A processor and sporting a 2.5-inch screen and a 3MP camera. The Peak has a 1.2GHz Qualcomm 8225 processor, which is dual-core, and it has a larger 4.3-inch screen, an 8MP rear camera and a 1.3MP front-facing camera.

Geeksphone’s involvement no doubt has something to do with being based in Spain –Telefonica is really the link here. The Spanish telecoms giant has been working closely with Mozilla on Firefox OS since the middle of last year, and has promised to launch smartphones based on the OS during this year. To that end, the telco will be buying in “a number” of Geeksphone devices, both for internal testing and for free distribution to interested developers.

“To make Firefox OS a success we need to assure a rich ecosystem and compelling user experience since day one. And that will only be possible if we provide developers the appropriate tools to make it happen,” Telefonica Digital product development head Carlos Domingo said in a statement on Tuesday.

It’s not hard to surmise why Telefonica is so keen on promoting and adopting Firefox OS. For a start, its business is largely in emerging markets, particularly in Latin America, where the low-cost smartphone business is booming. And that’s the segment where Mozilla is trying to play.

But it’s also about asserting power. With the rise of iOS and Android, value and power in the smartphone business are gravitating more and more to the platform vendors, Apple and Google. Carriers want something truly open because they can customize it and own the interface on the devices they sell – this is precisely the thinking at Jolla. At the very least, Telefonica’s demonstrable keenness on Firefox OS serves as a warning shot to Google, pointing out that operators still have options when it comes to reasserting control.

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Takeaways from mobile’s second quarter

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 06:55:19 +0000

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