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September 27, 2012

Is there a FireFox in the Smartphone Henhouse?

Is there any room whatsoever in the smartphone and mobile tablet market space for any Web browsers other than Safari, Android, Explorer and BlackBerry? The short and unequivocal answer is essentially no.

Sure, there is the Opera browser in both its full and mini forms, and yes, Opera commands a certain tiny percentage of market share - too small to measure against the giants, but enough to be non-trivial for the company itself. But we'll exclude Opera from this discussion.


Image via
www.mozilla.org

There is one browser out there in the meantime, that never shows up when the discussion turns to mobility. And that is, perhaps surprising to some, Mozilla's Firefox. Why is that? Because in order for a browser to appear on a smartphone it needs to have an intimate relationship with the mobile operating system the given smartphone is associated with. And as far as mobile devices are concerned, Firefox has no such relationship. Theoretically, it could work as an Android browser, but given the tight relationship between Android and its native browser, Firefox would simply not stand a chance of gaining anything beyond completely trivial market share.

Hence, iOS devices - whether iPhones or iPads - sport Safari. Any and all Android-based mobile devices (but excluding any devices, such as the Kindle, which are based on heavily modified versions of Android) sport Android's browser. BlackBerry of course offers its own browser within the current BB 7 version of its operating system, and will, with BB 10, unleash what RIM believes will be the most sophisticated HTML5 browser on the planet. And of course, Microsoft's Explorer will reign supreme on all phones that either run WP7 or will run WP8 in short order.

So what is a Firefox to do? Simple…develop its own Firefox-based mobile operating system. That sounds extraordinarily far-fetched to us at this very late stage of the mobile OS game. Monster Microsoft has all of a four percent share of the mobile OS market at the moment, so what chance can tiny Firefox have of breaking into the mobile space? We would wager that it has absolutely no chance at all. But a new Strategy Analytics report apparently begs to differ with our view of it.

According to the research company's latest research, which was developed inside of the its Wireless Smartphone Strategies (WSS) practice area, Firefox has indeed developed a new and emerging mobile operating system - Firefox OS - and Strategy Analytics believes that it will actually manage to capture at least a one percent share of global smartphone shipments in 2013.

The new Firefox mobile platform is said to be open-source, licensable, and relatively low-cost. Firefox OS also supports HTML5 Web apps . The initial goal for Firefox OS is to target entry-level smartphone users - though this market segment is already dominated by…Android.

But Firefox OS will have no brand awareness among smartphone consumers worldwide, absolutely no retail presence in the critical and enormously influential United States market, and it will have essentially no ecosystem of supporting apps, no app store, and no real services.

Never the less, as we've noted ongoing in our discussions of mobile operating systems, neither the mobile device vendors nor the wireless carriers really want to be stuck with a world that consists almost entirely and only of Android and iOS. It is to their disadvantage to have only two operating systems wielding so much market share.

So whenever another mobile operating system begins to make the rounds, the vendors and wireless carriers listen. In the case of Firefox, it isn't a new startup, nor is it an operation residing inside of a vendor (e.g. Samsung). It is, rather, an OS that is derived from a company with a very long and solid reputation within the desktop browser space.

As such it is, according to Strategy Analytics, gaining real interest from several hardware vendors and operators, including heavyweights like ZTE and Telefonica. Such companies may likely be enough to give both the Firefox mobile OS and the Firefox mobile browser enough of a foothold to make the effort worthwhile for Firefox to pursue.

Strategy Analytics is forecasting in is new report, for example, that the first Firefox smartphones will likely launch commercially in Latin America or Western Europe in the first half of next year. And the company believes that Firefox OS will capture a one percent share of global smartphone shipments in 2013 through such efforts.

But can Firefox move beyond the "one percent?" It seems extremely far-fetched.

Want to learn more about today’s powerful mobile Internet ecosystem? Don't miss the Mobility Tech Conference & Expo, collocated with ITEXPO Austin 2012 taking place Oct. 2-5 2012, in Austin, TX.  Stay in touch with everything happening at Mobility Tech Conference & Expo. Follow us on Twitter.




Edited by Brooke Neuman


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