lg optimus g pro - AOL.com

DISTRO
03.08.13
FORUM
EDITORIAL
If you had to live on $3,500 a year, I
doubt a smartphone data plan would be
high on your list of must-haves.
Mozilla’s Kovacs shared a stage at
some point with his counterparts at
Ooredoo (formerly Qtel) and Bharti
Airtel — two operators that could find
themselves carrying Firefox OS devices.
But, while Dr. Nasser Marafih and
Manoj Kohli spent significant time talking
about the importance of increasing
wireless broadband penetration during
the shared keynote, they also harped on
the importance of using available bandwidth
efficiently. That does mean freeing
up particular frequencies for 3G and 4G
use, but it also means WiFi offloading
and effectively managing data consumption
on the device side. Nokia’s Xpress
Browser and Opera Mini do this through
extensive use of compression that relies
on a middleman server operated
by those companies. It’s not unthinkable
that Firefox OS could use a similar
technique on its “apps” but we’ve heard
nothing about it or the creation of the
necessary infrastructure from Mozilla.
And if the phone is going to literally
be nothing more than a portal to the
web, then it’s going to be a tough sell
for those that have to subsist on a very
strict data diet.
The unfortunate truth is that Firefox
OS just doesn’t offer anything that consumers
in developed markets want. Nor
anything those in emerging markets need.
Mozilla can tell us “the web is the ecosystem”
or encourage us to “blaze your
The unfortunate
truth is that
Firefox OS just
doesn’t offer
anything that
consumers
in developed
markets want.
Nor anything
those in
emerging
markets need.
own path,” but a budget Android handset
does all the same things and more. During
their shared keynote Kohli turned to
Stephen Elop and told him he’d like to
see $30 smartphones. If Firefox OS has
any chance of succeeding, it will have to
deliver a rock-solid browsing experience
at prices near that and figure out a way
to efficiently manage data consumption.
Most importantly, it will need to learn
the same lesson Apple and Facebook have
— HTML5 “apps” just don’t cut it.
Terrence is too complicated and
multifaceted to be reduced to pithy
one liners. He’s also kind of a jerk.