That Firefox OS mobe: The sorta phone left behind after a mugging Mobile World Congress - the mobile networks' annual shindig - was getting unwieldy when 10,000 attendees and exhibitors hobbled between yachts in Cannes harbour, so it was moved to Barcelona. Last year, 70,000 attended MWC in the Spanish city, so it was moved to a new venue with twice the floor space and moving walkways between …
A massive company that changes it's mobile strategy more often than I change my underpants, leaving all existing users in the lurch.
It happened with WindowsCE, It happened with Kin, It happened with Windows Phone, with Windows Phone 7.whatvever and it will happen with Windows Phone 8 too.
One minute it's .NET Compact Framework, the next week it;s silverlight, god only knows what it is this week, but for sure any Windows Phone you will end up cursing the day you ever bought it...
Never really understood this mentality. Perhaps I'm missing something in my phone use ... perhaps it's not there for browsing the web, doing emails, sms, watching vids, mp3 player, games, organising one's life, satnav and a very limited number of useful apps ...
Sure I understand that some people are mentally very rigid and lack intellectual flexibility to the point that they find it hard to learn anything new quickly ... so having a familiar UI is important to some.
I also understand that for some people it's important to have the same or 'better' than all their friends as this helps them to define their personality and place in the world.
But I really don't understand what people are going on about when they suggest that any of these phones are 'better' than each other. The reality is that they all do the most important tasks required of a smartphone. Furthermore no one has to keep the same phone for more than a couple of years so if the phone you buy does it's job it's quite irrelevant what the company behind it does in the interim ... no one is forcing you to buy them again.
WP - " a massive company backing it" with more 'form' for shafting it's collaborators than almost any other.
Microsofts size + Microsofts past behaviour + Microsofts total lack of monopoly leverage = Microsoft fail. It's too late for the industry to stop Google dictating terms to them, it's the perfect time to hobble Microsoft and they'd be idiots not to do that. Even if I agreed WP is good, good for business or desirable, having Microsoft in your market never is.
"Microsofts past behaviour"
... is probably why the network operators are backing every alternative to Android but Microsoft. On one hand, they've seen others get bitten by the "big bad Microsoft", and now they're scared of the "new big bad Google" who - as has been reported on El Reg recently - believe that their right to flog stuff and make money outweighs the public's right to privacy.
Unfortunately, only Microsoft has the financial muscle to provide an alternative to Google. Unless the operators can put aside their infighting and work together to create a new breed of smartphone to compete. Personally, I'd rather see a blend of the two, with multiple smartphone operating systems - choice is always good.
"because the network operators fear Google so much, they’re backing every conceivable alternative, except the one that can succeed, which is Windows Phone."
'jaw dropped at that one. 'Gave up reading and came straight here.
Ditto.
Has anyone else noticed how Orlowski and TheVogon formerly known as RICHTO (TVFKR) are never seen at the same time? Hmmm...
> jaw dropped at that one.
Indeed. WinMoPho is just an unsuccessful iPhone. MS would do exactly the same as Apple, given the chance and market expertise.
The Telco's need a USP. If I were the telco's I'd try to license apps on user's behalf (or purchase via phone bill) in return for no spyware or advertising. Free and (since no advertising) faster apps, slightly more expensive calls. It might be a big hit with business where the company pays for calls, but the users get apps for free and it would reduce the data load on the network as adverts are no longer pulled from all over the internet.
I don't know if it would work, but its worth investigating.
"It might be a big hit with business where the company pays for calls, but the users get apps for free and it would reduce the data load on the network as adverts are no longer pulled from all over the internet."
Many big corporates (like my 90,000 employee company) specifically ban users from downloading apps or media on work devices, including phones. And the last thing the network guys want is to replace the minimal load of a handful of adverts for permitted apps with the vast load of the entire company downloading dancing dog videos or playing networked games. So I don't see your mixed private/work example cutting much ice with corporate phone buyers, all aiming for the cheapest, nastiest crap they can find. In my company's case they standardised on nice cheap Wildfire S handsets, rolled them all out, and promptly had to replace them all with Orange San Diego's because the Wildfire S is too small for most people's hands, and too slow and clunky in operation (which could have been foreseen, but for the fact that somebody in IT procurement was suffering from the red mist, and could only see the euro signs).
I think your offer makes good sense for retail customers, and is a good way of building a value added offer (unlike MNO's current offers of crapply customised Android makeovers that add no value but simply delay the roll out of updates). But that requires Toadafone and their mates to think like a customer, and there's precious little evidence that they can.
What AO misses here is not that Firefox needs to be attractive or desirable, nor does it even need to sell - it's an option for the future. A hugely important option, because if Google do change the rules, then there is a working alternative. You can always pay to add some polish later if the need arises, but for a handful of shekels they (and the handset makers) know that they aren't beholden to MS or Google alone. It certainly needs to work at the basic level, because that's not something you can build quickly, and if it doesn't work you can't even sell it and promise future upgrades. Whereas a lumpen but effective OS can be rolled out, and then you throw money at the UI.
I doubt that this will become a major player in the phone OS world (although note how Frefox became a major player in the browser market on the back of the poor quality of its major competitor). But for the MNO's and the phone makers, it just needs to persist, ideally to keep Google in line, and failing that to be an exit door from Android. Like an ejector seat in a military aircraft, you really want it to be there, but you don't want to have to use it.
@Andrew - "you can’t get everything you want in any format you want for a decent price, and it doesn’t play seamlessly. All the things Apple does within its own walled garden"
Joking about the "format" thing and the "price" thing, right? 'Cause that's freaking hilarious. I need a new cup of coffee and a new keyboard.
...why would any of the mobile corps, etc. want to hitch their hardware wagons to WindowsPhone? Experience, or failing that history, says there's a good chance they'll be shafted as MS sets out to call the tune. I'm not saying MS is the devil incarnate, or that WP is crap, but perhaps it's understandable that plenty of people who want to make money try to make sure that is little as possible gets creamed off their profit margins, often wafer thin at the best of times, to feed the shareholders of an OS vendor who is beyond their control and used to believing that it's in charge.
...especially when it comes to Firefox OS. I have a Lumia 820 and like it as much as the next man, as long as it isn't Eadon. Yet even I recognise that a new OS entering the market can only be a good thing. Is it going to cause Google and Apple to quake in their boots? I doubt it. Will it inspire Windows Phone 8 and BB OS 10 to fight tooth and nail for the third spot, thus improving their own OSes and setting a benchmark for newcomers to aim for? I hope so.
Even the mighty Android and iOS had issues when they were first launched and had extremely small markets for their first year or so.
I think the point was that, given that both iOS and Android have made progress and improvements since they were launched, it's strange to see FirefoxOS come out with so much progress and improvements yet to be made. Surely they've looked at a recent example from the competition and so should have made an effort to compete.
At least, that's how I read it.
there is one thing about WP8 - the devices are cheap. If you want a work phone that connects seamlessly to an internal cloud and exchange environment then they are cheap to run and cheap to set up. Battery lasts reasonable time between charging too.
Dont get me wrong, I wouldnt swap my galaxy S2 for one for -personal- use but im trialling a couple here at work for the SMT and they seem to do the job for the right price.
Being an old person who uses his phone for phoning, text, email and maps, and little else, I have to say I love my Lumia 920 and it's got a great camera. As you say, it integrates well into the world of Exchange, and that's just what I want. Battery life's pretty good, too.
"Even the mighty Android and iOS had issues when they were first launched and had extremely small markets for their first year or so."
It's also worth noting that iphone's 2nd place really is very recent - the history of smartphones has really been Symbian, then Android, with iphone mostly in 3rd, 4th or 5th place. It pipped into 2nd with Symbian being dropped, and BB's loss in share, but it's really more than Android has come to dominate, now at near 80% share. (Indeed, the gap between iphone and Android is far greater than iphone and whoever's in 3rd place.)
And whilst Android grew rapidly after its first year, it took iphone around 3 or 4 years to get anywhere near comparable to other platforms.
"Even the mighty Android and iOS had issues when they were first launched and had extremely small markets for their first year or so."
Been saying this for ages, normally as a challenge to the anti-choice biggots to find numbers to back up their claims - not that they ever have, accurate Microsoft stats seem to be rare as rocking-horse shit, but I figured that if these zealots actually had a point to make rather than just decrying Microsoft at every opportunity, they'd find some.
I guess they'd be happy to live in a world where this sort of behaviour is perfectly fine and above board.
Why? If we have only one dominant player or even 2, then more competition can be good. If we already have 4 (iOS, Android, WP, BB) then we have competition and differentiation already. A slew of similar competing nix-based OS does not seem to do anything but fragment the ecosystem, especially the nix part of it.
If we already have 4 (iOS, Android, WP, BB) then we have competition and differentiation already
@JDX: You're a Windows Phone fanboi, we get it, and we also understand why you should be worried about new competition entering the market and ending once and for all what chance your favourite platform has of achieving 5% market share.
More operating systems entering the market place is a good thing, particularly when they can interoperate using HTML5 (Firefox OS, Ubuntu, Sailfish, BB10, maybe Tizen) and Qt (Ubuntu, Sailfish, BB10, Android, iOS, maybe Tizen).
More choice, more diversity, yet essentially one shared ecosystem - what's not to like?
Actually, I really like your point about interoperability. with HTML5 and Qt. I really hate and resent the whole lock-in with Apple and Microsoft (and Android), whether it might be on the phone or the desktop.
I don't know why more platforms aren't built with Qt. I use a package for writing embedded code which is called Crossworks. It's written using Qt and it's available not only for Linux, Windows and OS X, but also Open Solaris (and yes, I bought it to run on Linux, we *do* buy software, us Linux users!). It [Qt] makes fast, good looking truly cross-platform applications, every night Rowley do an automated build for each platform. It bemuses me that [third party] companies that make applications limit themselves to one OS. I really don't care about which platform has biggest market share; if people want to get locked-in with MS or Apple, that's their lookout, but it doesn't make sense for the third party app writers (and frankly, it doesn't really make sense for the users).
"More choice, more diversity, yet essentially one shared ecosystem - what's not to like?" Spot on!
>>@JDX: You're a Windows Phone fanboi, we get it
Come back when you can make an argument rather than just insult people for upvotes. If a fanboi is someone who thinks WP is roughly on a par with Android and iOS then sure I'm a fanboi.
HTML5 is not the answer. It lacks many essential features and requires developing in a horrific toolset. That's WHY everyone writes apps for multiple platforms in the first place, not for fun. Maybe in 5 years your point will be valid.
Maybe in 5 years your point will be valid.
The point is valid now, the fact you don't think it is shows how badly you have your head stuck up Ballmers ass. The entire Firefox UI is written in just HTML+CSS, which just goes to show it can be done. Today.
For the new platforms other than Firefox OS, if you want to go beyond HTML5, then you also have Qt, which works on every platform (though not Windows Phone, but that's Microsofts loss).
There's a world of choice out there that you seem to be closing your mind to. Developers are not stupid, they'll choose the platforms that make sense and if that means using tools that allow them to target the incumbents (iOS/Android) and also the new players for very little additional effort then they will do so.
Keep drinking the Microsoft koolaid and rocking the Windows Phone pal, it sounds like you'll be one of the last.
WP has its own updates pushed out from MS's mothership and it's own MS-controlled app store where MS gets the cash and MS-centric services... it's a copy and paste of the iPhone.
But yes, they should have funnelled money between them into the GSMA and come up with an Android fork with n different operator-flavoured versions of a home screen, icons, operator app store, mobile manufacturer app store (got to bribe them somehow), media store, account management app, push e-mail, cloud storage, Joyn, twatbook app, etc... Can't be that difficult, most of it's done already for Android and Intel would love the chance to throw money at it too.
"But yes, they should have funnelled money between them into the GSMA and come up with an Android fork with n different operator-flavoured versions of a home screen, icons, operator app store, mobile manufacturer app store (got to bribe them somehow), media store, account management app, push e-mail, cloud storage, Joyn, twatbook app, etc... Can't be that difficult, most of it's done already for Android and Intel would love the chance to throw money at it too."
Why would anyone in the market for a nice phone want this? The phones would need to be either much cheaper than existing Android phones, or better.
Given that Android is given away to manufacturers and the major expense is the hardware, the phones are unlikely to be cheaper. The phones are extremely unlikely to be better: there is no possibility that the network operators will come up with a better maps app than Google, and a multitude of shitty app stores will be correctly perceived by consumers to be inferior to one good app store.
I could see this plan might snare a few customers at the low end of the market, but at the higher end, forget it.
Nobody at the higher end buys one of those mobiles rebadged for an operator, but there are plenty of people at the lower end who don't care and something like this would be fine for them. Intel wants to subsidise Atom mobiles. The operators can get revenue from the app store, customer data, and advertising instead of Google. They might have a problem with maps, but Nokia's just announced they're willing to licence theirs out.
An Android-compatible platform which gives some power back to the operators wouldn't really take long to develop and would certainly be a better strategy than flailing about year after year. People who want the real Android deal but fancy any operator-specific apps (you never know, there might be some...) could easily download them if they feel like it.
>Oddly, there is a licence fee to Microsoft for use of some unspecified patents (sound familiar?).
>Unless you ignore Microsoft's threats, that is.
Quite. MS refuses to even disclose what it is they're demanding royalties for. More protection racket than licence fee.
Both continue to look at alternatives and support windows phone. Nothing is perfect whether that be apple, google, MSFT or BB but competition is good and I agree with your comments that windows phone is probably the most poised to be able to compete so long as Microsoft doesn't screw it up......(waits for crickets chirping)
It seems to me that there is no doubt that there is a market for a techie phone. Someone can surely step in and make that market work for them. I suspect that it is merely a question of time before one of the Linux phone OS' is successful on its own terms.
In this context banging on about 'Apps' seems pointless. The mass market is pretty much sewn up - we get it! No, a fork of Android will not do the job because no-one in their right mind wants to run Java on a mobile phone.
"In this context banging on about 'Apps' seems pointless. The mass market is pretty much sewn up - we get it! No, a fork of Android will not do the job because no-one in their right mind wants to run Java on a mobile phone."
..except that you write in Java, and compile to Dalvik bytecode, which is not Java bytecode, that being most of the bloody point. You know, the Dalvik VM not being the JVM...
Unless you've not been keeping abreast of events in the last couple of years, matters surrounding Android and Java are at the heart of a rather large court case. You could do worse than reading up a middle before making posts like that.
A slobbering of Eadon? Or the black badge man as I like to call him/her/thing.
Personally, more OSes that can enter the ring the better. Especially if Firefox OS is much more lightweight and communication-centric. Some people want smartphones, but don't need all the app-gumph that comes with it (and the requirement to spend, spend, spend on apps).
Simplicity is king. In terms of architecture, iOS/Android are far from that now.
"Some people want smartphones, but don't need all the app-gumph that comes with it (and the requirement to spend, spend, spend on apps)."
I must have missed that part of my phone contract; I have yet to spend a penny at the Google store. I generally find plenty of free options that are suitable for my relatively light phone usage (email, social media, restaurants, maps, etc.).
Even the free apps try to encourage you to buy their PRO counter parts. Maybe I should of said a "reliance" on an app store to fulfil people's requirements (app stores cost money to run/promote). Again, iOS/Android are too app-centric. Any major development to the basic communication frameworks (messaging/e-mail/calls etc) have barely been touched.
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