The new Firefox OS for phones, is, by many accounts brilliant, and I for one am very much for it being based on HTML5. this seems to me like the best of all worlds. Especially if they provide support to all the phones functions, and do it in a device independent manner.
And it’s going to be open source, so any manufacturer can take it up.
However, is this enough for the OS to succeed.
Honestly i am not so sure.
Most devices do not have good margins, and therefore success is driven by volume sales.
Thus the cost and effort for your development team to test and debug the new OS is high.
the best reason migt be that there are a lot of apps and the like out there, which will attract customers and make them want to buy your device … however it is also expensive for the many small firms that build the apps to create yet another version. There is some light here because an HTML5 app can be made cross platform, for a lot of types of app, and so a developer might look at it.
But the economics probably don’t stack up. It is hard to get folks to part with cash, unless there is a seamless payment service. This is the problem with Android, that is only just now being addressed, and until it is, devs won’t get a good return on their investment.
so I am going to have to say, sadly, that this is not likely to take off without some serious attention to the entire ecosystem surrounding niche operating systems.
All Things Mobile 
Posted on July 23, 2012
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