After all the releases of phones such as iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S3, and Windows 8 phone on Nokia series, we seem to forget that there is still another rather powerful label that might enter the competition: Mozilla Firefox. After competing in the browser area, now all these developers are competing with smart phones and potentially tablets. Mozilla developers is currently promoting its new development: Firefox Operating System running in smart phones.
It seemed that the war between open source movement and Microsoft is not quite done yet. Based on what Mozilla's director, Andreas Gal, said Microsoft will probably be the one losing in the competition for this area, and perhaps Mozilla, Android, and Apple are the ones that are going to stay strong in the competition.
As of now, Firefox OS is the only big operating system that uses open source; even Android is half way to open source. Currently Mozilla developer have created some applications such as payment applications on the Firefox OS, but the developers are hoping that users are actively creating applications for the phone, and can distribute it directly to other users, unlike how Apple store works.
While first seeing this OS running on Samsung, I thought I have forgotten Mozilla for a while and the fact that it owns a relatively decent browser. This operating system looks just like Apple iOS and Android's system in the way they organizes the menu and the four icons on the bottom. It looks like they have a great graphics and resolution. However, looking at the video I feel that there is not much to be offered in the phone as far as features and capability. They seem to provide just as much as other phone out there without improving some features or capability that can attract users to switch to their operating system. It is great in which now developers or users perhaps can easily learn and distribute their own application and customize the operating system. However, I still do not see the demand from people or end users, especially, to modify or even get access to the source code. It is great for businesses and their computers, but unfortunately the mobile market is not quite there yet. So, I do not believe this product might be able to be as competitive as the other three giants in the smart phone OS market. But who knows, perhaps in the future it is not just Apple, Android, or Windows 8, but also Firefox.
Source: cnet.com
CA
No comments:
Post a Comment