Thanks, Amir.

I looked into this some more and started talking with folks at Mozilla.
I guess you're one too!

They have been calling this Boot to Gecko but the news story didn't use that name so I didn't make the association.

The current plan is to focus on the Telefonica Brazil release and take it from there. I was concerned that developing an OS involves a lot of stuff beyond web browsing, and even if a company pulls that off (think WebOS) there is no guarantee of success.

It turns out Mozilla and others have been very active on device-level APIs and that will make things feasible.

Let's see if they get a phone out in Q1.

Phil

On Jul 5, 2012 8:16 PM, "Amir E. Aharoni" <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:

Mozilla's idea is to do it, as must as possible, with nothing but web
technologies, so there would be little-to-none "native" code, but only
HTML5 / JS / CSS. A lot of ideology is involved in it - it would be a
lot easier for everybody to simply accept WebKit as the de-facto
standard, but de-facto standards is something that Mozilla doesn't
like.

Of course, I'm biased, because I'm a volunteer Mozilla Rep.


2012/7/5 Philip Chang <pchang@wikimedia.org>:
> Rupert, thanks very much for sharing this.
>
> This smells a bit like Symbian, which originally was motivated by the desire
> to avoid dominance by any single evil empire.
>
> However, I seriously wonder if Mozilla has what it takes to do something as
> ambitious as a phone OS. I've known of projects with hundreds of developers
> trying to create just a decent mobile web browser - that failed.
>
> It would be great if anyone out there has any insights about this - in
> particular, rumors about progress at Mozilla.
>
> Phil
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 11:34 AM, rupert THURNER <rupert.thurner@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Telefonica SA (TEF), the former Spanish phone monopoly reeling from
>> plummeting sales at home, is plotting to claw back control from Google Inc.
>> (GOOG) in Latin America.
>>
>> Telefonica, luring first-time smartphone buyers in Brazil, is designing a
>> handset software system that is freely available to network operators and
>> manufacturers, similar to Google’s Android, the world’s biggest platform.
>> For network carriers, it’s a chance to have a say over what consumers see,
>> use and buy via their smartphones, lost to Google and Apple Inc. (AAPL) when
>> such handsets became must-have devices.
>>
>> Telefonica has teamed up with Mozilla Corp., the company whose Firefox
>> program challenged the dominance of Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)’s Web browser.
>> This week, six additional companies, including Germany’s Deutsche Telekom AG
>> (DTE) and Sprint Nextel Corp. (S), said they will use the platform in other
>> countries, such as Poland. While Android is free, operators currently must
>> accept that the biggest search engine controls the software code and makes
>> advertising money from pushing users to take its mapping, e-mail and search
>> services.
>>
>> “We don’t like the fact that one part of the value chain of our business
>> is tightly controlled,” Carlos Domingo, director of product development at
>> Telefonica’s digital unit, said in an interview. “In the case of the
>> emerging countries it’s worse, because it becomes a monopoly by Google.”
>>
>> Tailored Services
>>
>> By having access to the software and hardware from the beginning,
>> Telefonica will be able to tailor additional services for users in
>> fast-growing emerging markets in Latin America where many subscribers are
>> buying their first smartphone. Every second U.S. consumer and 37 percent of
>> western Europeans already own a smartphone.
>>
>> Telefonica, Spain’s biggest phone company, will bring the first Firefox
>> handset to Brazil as smartphone growth in South and Central America is
>> soaring, with annual shipments climbing to 160 million devices by the end of
>> 2015 from 31.2 million in 2011, according to estimates from Ovum, a
>> London-based telecommunications industry research firm.
>>
>> While Google has a head start, Telefonica is racing to compete, targeting
>> “double-digit market” share for its low- priced Android challenger in Brazil
>> by the end of 2015, Domingo said.
>>
>> Slipped Deadline
>>
>> The deadline has already slipped. With its first phone initially due at
>> the end of this year, Telefonica said before its investor conference in
>> London today that the first handsets built by Chinese manufacturers ZTE
>> Corp. (763) and TCL Communication Technology Holdings Ltd. (2618) will now
>> be offered from early 2013.
>>
>> Telefonica is in talks with six additional handset makers, Matthew Key,
>> the head of the company’s digital unit, said at the investor meeting.
>>
>> “We’re overly reliant on Android and that’s not a strategically strong
>> position to be in,” he said.
>>
>> To persuade Latin American consumers to upgrade to smartphones, and not
>> take an Android device, the devices will need to be priced at about $100,
>> Domingo said.
>>
>> Deutsche Telekom is in talks to offer the handsets in its eastern European
>> markets, Thomas Kiessling, the company’s chief innovation officer, said in
>> an interview, adding that the phones would cost about 80 euros ($100) to 100
>> euros.
>>
>> Telefonica’s smartphone software drive, overseen by Telefonica Chief
>> Executive Officer Cesar Alierta, marks the latest attempt by operators to
>> build out rival services and applications and convince investors that they
>> are more than pipes that facilitate the surging demand for data-hungry
>> devices. Their previous efforts to build app stores, send calls and messages
>> over the Web, and develop payment systems, have been abandoned or brought
>> out long after rivals have stolen a march.
>>
>> Failed Efforts
>>
>> “We’ve also been on board of other operator consortiums that have failed,”
>> Domingo said, adding that these joint projects were never “as open as they
>> claimed to be.”
>>
>> Telefonica, which has net financial debt of 57 billion euros, in May
>> reported an 8.8 percent drop in first-quarter operating profit after it lost
>> customers in its home market to discounters. The shares dropped 2.6 percent
>> to 10.21 euros in Madrid. The stock has fallen 24 percent this year, making
>> it the worst performer in the 19-company Bloomberg Europe Telecommunication
>> Services Index.
>>
>> Telefonica today predicted its digital business to generate annual sales
>> of about 5 billion euros by 2015. Revenues of Telefonica Digital, created in
>> September 2011 by combining Internet assets over three continents such as
>> social-networking site Tuenti and Web-phone unit Jajah, will expand at an
>> annual growth rate of 20 percent, it said.
>>
>> Powerful Player
>>
>> Google in April reported first-quarter profit that topped analysts’
>> estimates as CEO Larry Page, who took charge a year ago, has pushed Google
>> deeper into display advertising and mobile services.
>>
>> Android is installed on 56 percent of new smartphones, more than twice
>> Apple’s share, researcher Gartner Inc. said in May. In the first quarter,
>> global handset sales declined 2 percent to 419 million, while smartphone
>> sales rose 45 percent.
>>
>> “You need a powerful player to influence the road map,” said Malik Saadi,
>> an analyst at Informa in London. “The operators are losing that battle, even
>> with Android, and the only way is to create their own brand in the mass
>> smartphone market.”
>>
>> Mozilla, which has doubled its staffing in mobile in the last year, is
>> starting from a low base as it aims to do the same thing with smartphones as
>> it did to the desktop with its web browser. Mozilla’s existing mobile
>> browser had less than 1 percent of the market at the end of 2011, according
>> to Net Applications.
>>
>> Failed Rivals
>>
>> By designing a device where even the dialing screen is a web page, it’s a
>> chance for Mozilla to differentiate devices, said CEO Gary Kovacs. “If you
>> look at Android and Apple and Windows, a phone in Brazil looks the same as a
>> phone in Cleveland,” he said in an interview.
>>
>> At the same time, the operators are following a path littered with
>> failures from both carriers and manufacturers to come up with a rival
>> platform.
>>
>> Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) stopped making devices using its open- source
>> WebOS software it acquired from Palm Inc. for $1.2 billion in 2011. Nokia
>> Oyj (NOK1V) scrapped its own Meltemi platform in June, according to a person
>> familiar with the matter.
>>
>> Domingo is aware of those pitfalls. While Mozilla’s foray into Internet
>> browsing made the web competitive, he said, “that is very different to the
>> situation we have in mobile.”
>>
>> “It is all about control, and once you have that control you can open up
>> many doors,” said Nick Dillon, an analyst at Ovum. “It’s the ability to push
>> apps on the home screen.”
>>
>> To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan Browning in London at
>> jbrowning9@bloomberg.net
>>
>> To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kenneth Wong at
>> kwong11@bloomberg.net
>>
>> Find out more about Bloomberg for Android: http://m.bloomberg.com/android
>>
>>
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>
>
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> Wikimedia Foundation
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