I like the idea of a web-first device, and I believe that we can do much better than the marketplace approach, in particular now that we have Service Workers, but I think you'll need to come up with a very strong pitch to get Mozilla to try that.
So let me ask the first few pitch questions :) 1/ Who would use it? Market trends indicate that by now, at least in rich countries, most people who want a tablet already have one and have no incentive to change. 2/ Who would build the hardware? Experience shows that working with hardware partners is &*^%*&^ hard. 2bis/ Ok, you propose to flash it on top of an Android, until success, but who would do that when it only has a subset of the features of Android? 3/ What's the benefit for the Web and/or Mozilla's mission? Cheers, David On 09/02/16 18:14, Benjamin Francis wrote: > Dear Firefox OS Community, > > As you know, Firefox OS for smartphones is going to be "sunset > <https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.fxos/q23oHD8fXHY/jg6cAT-tBwAJ>" > after version 2.6 as the Connected Devices team at Mozilla expands into > new types of connected devices. Firefox OS will continue to be used for > Smart TVs and will be evaluated for its suitability for other product > proposals going through a new Product Innovation Process > <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Connected_Devices/Product_Innovation_Process> > at Mozilla. > > A little known fact is that tablets were actually the original target > form factor for B2G, but once we partnered with mobile carriers they > were more interested in smartphones, which is why we ended up building > smartphones. I believe that tablets are, and always were, a more > suitable target for Firefox OS than smartphones. > > I'm considering pitching a product proposal to the Product Innovation > Board at Mozilla for a simple tablet device dedicated to using the web. > The idea is that the entire device is a web browser. There's no app > store, no packaged apps, no built-in apps and no app install process. > The home screen is automatically populated with your top sites based on > frecency and web content is front and centre. This would be pitched as a > secondary device for casual web browsing and entertainment, and as a > companion/control device for smart TVs and other connected devices in > the home. > > As the Connected Devices team at Mozilla expands into new product areas, > there is an ongoing discussion about how to simplify the Firefox OS > stack to make it is more manageable to maintain going forwards. This > proposal would be in support of that effort as a use case for a > drastically simpler Firefox OS architecture with less features and a > much smaller API surface than the smartphone product. That also makes > this proposal different to the previous tablet project, which was really > just a scaled up version of the smartphone UI. > > Remember this is just an idea at this point and it doesn't have Mozilla > approval, it hasn't even got to gate 0 > <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Connected_Devices/Product_Innovation_Process#Process_.22Gates.22> > of the innovation process. But if this product were to succeed I think > it would require a small core team of full time Mozilla staff supported > by a large community effort. I would expect it to be developed first as > an open source project you can flash onto off-the-shelf Android tablets, > and only turned into a commercial product if it demonstrated the > necessary level of success. It's for this reason that I'm sharing this > very early stage idea here, to gauge the level of interest from the > community. > > You can find some information on the wiki > <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox_Pad> and a very early draft of a > presentation > <https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1WqFOsf6M2iRIjJbzwYIgTh6OguZALRnrEn5SVawE1gs/present#slide=id.p> > to pitch the idea to the Product Innovation Board. Let me know what you > think, and whether this is something you'd be interested in contributing to. > > Thanks > > Ben > > > _______________________________________________ > dev-fxos mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-fxos > _______________________________________________ dev-fxos mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-fxos
