Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones
Most of you are probably not aware that Opera Software (where I spent a decade on Opera Mini&#x2F;Mobile) went down the same rabbit hole around 2002-2006, spending many many man-years building a web-based (pre-smartphone) phone UI platform using web technologies. The product name was &quot;Opera Platform&quot;. Here are some screenshots:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;on4gHdi" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;on4gHdi</a><p>It failed for the same, predictable reasons: Yes, there are many web developers in the world compared to the number of (in this example) embedded rtos UI C&#x2F;C++ developers. However, on resource-constrained platforms (as phones tend to be, since they are battery-powered) it&#x27;s really hard and requires brilliant developers to be able to build web-based UIs that can compete in performance with non-web-based UIs built by (in comparison) not-so-brilliant developers.<p>And on top of this, Mozilla decided to shoot for (super) low-end devices as their main target - presumably because their bizdev people had spotted a theoretical opportunity, but failed to connect with engineering, or vice-versa. The first time I saw that I just laughed out loud, to be honest.<p>They actually have a time-honored tradition of following in the footsteps of Opera when it comes to ways of making money. Those sponsored tiles introduced in Firefox last year? Opera did that in 2008&#x2F;2009-ish. (Not to mention the concept of a graphical speed dial on the new tab page itself...) That Google search field to the right of the URL field? Opera pioneered that business model in 2001 - followed by Mozilla and Apple half a decade later. Sorry, I get carried away. :D