
Mobile Operators Announce Commitment to Firefox OS - charlieok
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/02/24/mozilla-unlocks-the-power-of-the-web-on-mobile-with-firefox-os/
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Tomdarkness
I'm just curious, so don't take this comment to mean or imply anything. What
does "commitment" to a mobile OS from a operator actually mean? What do, in
this case, Mozilla get from it?

As someone outside of the mobile phone industry (Just a simple consumer) I
don't see the advantage of having a mobile phone service provider "committing"
to your OS. Surely hardware manufacturers are vastly more important as they
are the people who are actually going to create devices that can run your OS?

~~~
nookiemonster
Mobile operators have to certify devices, even if they don't include them in
the portfolio.

This is a consequence of commitments to a country's spectrum management
organizations.

If an operator expresses commitment, I would take this is a very important
initial step, but not necessarily an indicator of full blown embracement of a
platform. Operators will schedule time for a device to go through their
certification labs. This means that a device can get approval from the
regional spectrum bodies for qualifications that ensure the device doesn't
interfere with authorized spectrum devices. Lab certification is not free- the
operators are eating a cost. But certainly it's not the same thing as buying
pallets of devices and trying to sell them to consumers.

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slajax
I'm pretty excited about the possibility of Firefox OS gaining significant
traction. If it were up to me Mozilla would be in just about every market
online. They are great at keeping people honest. Between this and Identify
Mozilla is coming back!

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kevining
Here's a video if anyone wants to see what one of these devices actually looks
like: <http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/24/zte-open-hands-on/>

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jburnat
I'm torn. On one hand, I really want Firefox to succeed. On the other, the
blood of mobile operators is as dark and thick as tar. Can this end well?

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slater
In list form:

* América Móvil

* China Unicom

* Deutsche Telekom

* Etisalat

* Hutchison Three Group

* KDDI

* KT

* MegaFon

* Qtel

* SingTel

* Smart

* Sprint

* Telecom Italia Group

* Telefónica

* Telenor

* TMN

* VimpelCom

~~~
timdorr
Deutsche Telekom is known as T-Mobile here in the US. So, the #3 and #4
networks will support it. I wonder if AT&T or Verizon will chime in soon?

~~~
rogerbinns
DT (non-US) and T-Mobile in the US don't operate as a single unit, so the
former committing to Firefox doesn't mean anything in the US. As an example
iPhone is available on DT, but not T-Mobile.

~~~
wwweston
T-Mobile was a sponsor at the Firefox OS app day in Mountain View and had a
speaker devote some time to why they thought it was a good thing.

While that doesn't necessarily mean a commitment to carrying devices running
it, it'd an awful lot of effort to go to if that weren't likely at all.

~~~
rogerbinns
Note that tmobile is moving to a sales model where you pay the full cost of
the phone up front (although they do allow explicit 20 month payment plans).
The result is cheaper service since it doesn't include the hidden costs of
recovering phone subsidies (approximately $20 per month).

This will mean that US consumers will be seeing the true hardware price for
the first time, and be able to make value judgements. Of course everyone
expects the whole thing will fail because Americans are used to cell phones
being really cheap, and tmobile has to try to convince people by doing
arithmetic on lifetime costs, which is a far harder (and more complicated)
sell.

I'm extremely sceptical that consumers will pay more for Firefox phones than
iPhone and top end Android. And I have no doubt they'd pick Firefox (or anyone
else for that matter) for phones that are "free", $50 or similar amounts, but
those phones won't exist on tmobile except for feature phones around the $150
mark. Given a choice between a $350 Firefox or Android phone it will be
interesting to see what happens, and the consumer will have to strongly
consider if they are getting that much value from their purchase.

~~~
com
I have bought unlocked, new Android phones for less than USD100 in the UK, so
I'm not sure I believe that a USD150 phone on US T-mobile will only be a
feature phone.

ZTE and Huawei are just the beginning of the wave of cheap smart phone
providers that I expect to destroy the feature phone as a widely used device
in the rich world in the coming years.

Granted, the two phones I bought weren't very fast and had smaller screens,
but they did have GPS, mobile data and ran all the apps that I tried from the
Play store.

~~~
rogerbinns
(BTW I'm a Brit living in the US). There are multiple issues in the US.

* The vast majority of phones are sold by carriers due to the subsidy model. This leaves a considerably smaller market for the rest. Note the carriers chose which phones to carry - they will not provide arbitrary phones. Note this also applies even when someone like Amazon or Costco sell phones as they act as an agent for the carrier and the prices shown are the subsidised ones, and the phones are the carrier ones.

* Because of that most consumers think phones already cost free/$100 or $200 for high end ones, and there is no incentive to buy a non-carrier phone since plans aren't any cheaper for a non-subsidised phone (with the exception of one type of plan on Tmobile and some of the pre-paid MVNOs).

* Of the big 4 carriers (~85% of all mobile users) half have a CDMA legacy and half GSM, so those phones you bought could only work on 2 of the 4 carriers anyway

* And even that wouldn't be enough. Many cheap GSM phones are tri-band. To work with voice in the US they need to be quad band (also support 850MHz). There are various issues with the data frequencies too (eg Tmobile's AWS band) and even differing LTE bands for newer/more expensive phones

* If you care about coverage then you generally have to go with one of the big 3 (tmobile has notoriously poor coverage except in the most populated areas). If you use an MVNO then you are typically limited to the hosting carrier's network only. As an example I'm a tmobile subscriber, but in various areas a lot of their coverage is actually provided as a transparent roaming arrangement by AT&T - you don't see roaming on your phone. Similarly Verizon and Sprint have roaming in various places. But when using an MVNO you would using the native underlying carrier coverage only which will be a lot smaller footprint.

* All phones have to pass the FCC certification which is added expense and time especially if your sales aren't going to be that high

* People don't visit other countries as much (proportionally). You could fit the UK (including NI, Shetland, Jersey etc) in 2/3rds of California. Montana is the same size as Germany. This means a huge internal market with virtually no external influence or need for interoperability. That said the Canadian market is even more messed up than the US one. I don't know about Mexico.

That said you can buy some cheap phones including below $100 - eg see Walmart
<http://goo.gl/yoABV> but note they are usually locked to a prepaid carrier!
This <http://goo.gl/KiUje> is what consumers usually see - the subsidised
prices which get you better phones at "cheaper" prices.

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st3fan
This is frakking awesome. This means that a considerable part of the world
will get access to Firefox OS and afforable phones.

~~~
rimantas
"It takes a one man to lead a horse to a river, but even forty cannot make it
drink". Having access does not mean a lot will care.

------
meaty
I hope they don't do an Android I.e 18 fragmented broken rarely upgraded OS's
with horrible carrier customisation.

This is the area that Microsoft with WinPhone 7+ and Apple with iOS have got
right.

~~~
rayiner
But that's what will happen. This looks destined to be a competitor to Android
in the low-end space, allowing carriers and handset manufacturers to customize
their offerings to differentiate them from the other cheap offerings.

~~~
currysausage
It really amuses me that those Android phone manufacturers seem to believe
customers gave a s--t about them trying to differentiate themselves from other
brands. Actually, if customers obviously don't care about their horrible
disimprovements, it only shows that they don't care at all. Do those managers
even use their own gadgets? I believe not.

What I don't get is why they don't allow me to put a vanilla Android on the
device. Oh, wait: they want me to buy a new phone when a major Android update
comes out. Nope, guys, I'm gonna stick with iPhone or Nexus. Too sad the
majority of customers likes to be fooled.

~~~
yareally
> Too sad the majority of customers likes to be fooled.

Not really fooled, just ignorant. Google is partially to blame for not
marketing and cultivating Android as a brand more and leaving it up to OEMs
(who mostly ignore it as a brand to differentiate once again).

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beaner
Maybe someone here will know - is Firefox OS going to be customized by
manufacturers like Android, or the same everywhere like Windows? I know it's
open source so manufacturers could do whatever they want, but maybe there's
some agreement I don't know about which will make them keep the standard ui.
Anybody know?

~~~
dreamdu5t
As far as I know, the UI is completely HTML/CSS/JS and can be entirely
replaced or customized.

Sadly that will just cause horrible fragmentation and bad design as it has for
Android.

~~~
Blenderkitty
Yeah - I don't see why people are so excited about this. To me, it looks like
the Firefox OS will end up being a carriers' vector to try and assert more
control over the phone ecosystem again. Without a big player like Apple,
Google, or MS to enforce some ground rules, the carriers can just completely
screw with any phone.

I think this will be a miserable experience for consumers - think about it -
why else would carriers be so excited?

~~~
dbaupp
Hopefully Mozilla can assert some control over when a carrier/manufacturer is
allowed to call something "Firefox OS" (like they do with Firefox itself) so
that there is a core brand which is un-crapware-ified.

~~~
DannyBee
Except mozilla has no real experience in marketing. So you are hoping they can
build a brand big enough and powerful enough that carriers are willing to cast
aside their main goal of differentiation from each other, just so they can
call their phone a "firefox os" phone, instead of hiding what it runs and
calling it whatever they want.

Good luck with that. :)

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Apocryphon
Has/will Ubuntu Mobile, Tizen or any of the other minor players announced
anything similar?

~~~
espadrine
Ubuntu:

They sure would love to. Their last move was to call out for mobile operators
and constructors.

If anything, this move will lower their chances (a mobile operator already
committed to an endeavor might not risk another). They may get a niche market
if their tech is good, however.

Tizen:

They will announce a market release, but really it depends on partnerships
with mobile operators.

------
espadrine
I feel the coming irony of the days when FirefoxOS will perform better and be
faster than Ubuntu phones.

(It's already true, but since Ubuntu phones aren't there yet, the comparison
is unfair.)

~~~
kevining
The low end ubuntu hardware specification is better than what they are
showcasing FirefoxOS on at MWC currently. It's hard to guess what the end
comparison will be once it's fully production ready.

Android and FFOS perform similarly on the same hardware platform for what it's
worth - each have their own advantages in some cases.

------
hoi
Totally irrelevant until operators actually start selling and subsidizing the
devices. Operators will support all OS's, it's in their interest to make sure
there is competition at the device and OS level. True commitment comes when
they start putting marketing dollars behind the real products.

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confluence
I love watching how incentives drive so many things I see around me.

Looks like the operators have just realised that Android is commoditizing
their services and turning them into just dumb substitutable commodity data
providers.

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joelberman
How many phone OS do we need? I think the reason we have so many is the same
reason we have so many different power connectors and screw heads. Because too
many A$$hats are alive.

~~~
ngokevin
Competition is good.

If you're worried about connectors, it probably has a MicroUSB-b port, and you
don't have to get it.

------
contingencies
Suck it, Google. This is what you get for being control freaks and abusing all
the other players. You cant own everything. You are going to lose the billing,
application distribution and DRM battle for sure now. Your burgeoning YouTube-
based media empire cum ChromeOS/DRM wet dream is destined for failure. Wake up
and smell the roses. You _are_ evil. We hate you.

~~~
GHFigs
"The majority of our revenue comes from the search functionality in the
Firefox browser. Google is the largest source of revenue and in December 2011,
we announced that we negotiated a significant and mutually beneficial revenue
agreement with Google. This new agreement extends our long term search
relationship with Google for at least three additional years." --
<http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2011/>

~~~
bdcravens
I upvoted you because so many tend to forget this. Any comparisons of Firefox
v. Chrome need to bear in mind the fact that development of Firefox is enabled
by Google.

It's also important to note that the $1B they pay Apple isn't insignificant
either:

[http://bgr.com/2013/02/11/google-apple-ios-default-
search-1-...](http://bgr.com/2013/02/11/google-apple-ios-default-
search-1-billion-324728/)

~~~
zobzu
The only reason they pay is the marketshare firefox/safari holds.

If it wasn't google paying, it would be microsoft, with bing.

It would be a huge loss for Google currently. Don't doubt for a second that if
Firefox marketshare falls under 5% Google will stop paying anything.

~~~
mbrubeck
Don't be so sure. Google is also one of Opera's biggest clients, paying a
significant sum to Opera for search traffic from their desktop browser,
despite its much smaller desktop market share:

[http://www.zdnet.com/opera-google-extend-search-deal-for-
two...](http://www.zdnet.com/opera-google-extend-search-deal-for-two-
years-7000002997/)

Opera makes about $15M per quarter in revenue from its desktop browser:

[http://www.favbrowser.com/opera-
software-q2-2012-financial-r...](http://www.favbrowser.com/opera-
software-q2-2012-financial-results/)

~~~
zobzu
ok maybe instead of 5% i should have said "an insignificant market share" (5%
is still pretty big)

Even Opera's marketshare is significant.

But just imagine, for a second, that 20% of the internet just gets to use bing
instead of google.com because it became the default overnight. Outch.

