According to rumours today the Firefox OS landscape may be set to change with Mozilla's Senior Vice President for Mobile Devices, Li Gong, who said:
"Sony is known for quality and user experience. So they are targeting for very very high (end). We are in joint discussions on the kind of device and what's the product."The problem for Mozilla and their fledgling OS is that while it will be budget devices which help the platform gain market share, the devices don't really capture the hearts and minds of consumers and as Gong said:
"The low-end entry point devices are good point to enter the market. But that doesn't mean we can't scale up or we don't want to scale. We do want to scale up... But an ecosystem takes some time to build."Mozilla were also keen to show how Android isn't quite as open as people like to think. Yes, companies are free to do as they please with it, but the development takes place behind closed walls and only after the latest version of Android is released are people free to make the changes they please to it. Firefox OS on the other hand, 'are the only company that takes a pure approach. We are entirely open. Not only open source, but open process. No price, no nothing.'
Gong went on to say that:
"People like to see us because we are totally transparent. All the products, all the roadmaps, the delivery, feature sets, bugs, fixes, everything is open. Anybody can come in and see where it's headed."
The only real issue for Firefox OS and Mozilla is the competition. There's Windows Phone from Microsoft, Ubuntu Touch from Canonical and there's Samsung's Tizen platform which we;ve yet to see land on the market yet. Mozilla need to make the most of the partnerships they have with carriers already and they need manufacturers and designers to do truly unique things which capture people's attentions and minds if they have any chance of competing with the current line up of mobile operating systems!
ComputerWorld via XperiaBlog.
