FIREFOX MOBILE OS Things You Need to Know Abstract Currently, Mobile phone industry is considered as one of the most dynamic industries with a numerous options available at both software end and hardware end. However, few of the major players have captured the mobile market, which keeps on entertaining the mobile domain every day. One such promising and latest mobile OS solution is a Firefox OS, which comes from the Mozilla group. This OS targets geographies where high-end Smartphones don t find a good user base while people there look for feature rich phones to get an essence of smartphones
Introduction- Current Mobile OS Market The current mobile OS market is filled with an array of platforms pouring in every other month. As the market has been captured by few of the major players like: Android and ios, other mobile operating systems are struggling to create a niche for themselves to capture greatest market shares. However, this market scenario is not uniform across the globe. The ios finds its major market share in regions like North America, certain areas of Europe and Australia. Considering other regions like Asia, South America, Android has major market penetration. Besides this, there are still many regions across the globe where feature phones have more share than the smartphones. But with this current mobile OS ecosystem, it doesn t mean that there is no chance for other OSs in the market. As most of the top mobile OS platforms are available on devices, which are quite expensive. Feature phones or cheap phones are seen to lose their presence in the cheap or affordable phone market. Firefox OS- Overview and Offerings The Firefox OS has been launched in the mobile market not as a competitor to other market players but as an OS to run on low cost and low spec devices. The vision behind this OS is to bring web connectivity to people who cannot afford smartphones. It aims to target emerging markets like South America and Eastern Europe, where there is still influencing of low cost smartphones or feature phones. The Firefox OS uses the Linux Kernel with Gecko Based runtime Engine. This OS runs on HTML5, JavaScript and other open web API s. The OS is a lightweight platform and the apps developed for this OS are smaller as compared to other languages because of the use of HTML5, CSS, and JS. To start with, Firefox has 19 different telephone service providers and 4 hardware providers to help this OS reach masses at the initial stage of its launch. The operating system proposes to act as a replacement for feature phone market captured by companies like Nokia, Ericsson, and Motorola. The OS targets to see a good number of apps for itself at the time of launch as the company behind it is Mozilla, which has 40% of its code developed for the community of developers out there. Some of the major offerings of the OS, which make it a good market player, are:
Open Source Solution: Being an open source solution, Firefox OS comes with a lot of advantages like: huge user community, ability to share code and ability to contribute. The OS pursues the goal of building a complete standalone OS for the Open Web. Mozilla, the company behind this OS, already has a strong user base working on other open source projects. Targeting Emerging Markets: Firefox OS is not competing with any other OS but it is targeting the emerging market by providing the smartphone functionality in low cost and low spec phones and still providing good performance and user experience. Familiar Web Principles of Development: Firefox OS is built on similar web technologies like HTML5/CSS3/JS and on the standard web principles for allowing developers to create and innovate with openness and freedom. Adaptive & Intelligent App Search: Firefox OS has an intelligent app search engine within it. This search mechanism not only makes it easy for users to search for the app but at the same time suggests users with apps that are similar to the one user searched for. This gives the other apps a good exposure and makes users know about the apps, which they might not have even heard about. Easy to Use Interface: Firefox OS has a very familiar user interface, which makes it easy for a first time user to get used to and adapt to the OS. As everything is implemented in HTML/CSS, the OS breaks the barriers between web and mobile apps to provide a great new experience. Buy Once use Many: One of the advantages of the Firefox OS is that apps bought once can be installed on Desktop, Tablets and other devices user might have which support Firefox OS. Another advantage for Android users is that they can use these apps in full screen mode on their Android devices with Firefox browser installed.
Increase Market Share with Firefox OS Apps For the business persons or entrepreneurs thinking on whether to develop for this platform or not, developing apps for Firefox OS is like capturing an additional market segment and increasing consumer base. And with development being in HTML, it makes it easy for publishers to write once and target multiple platforms at once, thus reducing cost overheads and app reachability. Firefox OS targets emerging markets by introducing low cost devices, thus the apps developed for this platform, in addition to Android or ios, will find greater user base and penetration for the business owners looking to expand their business and reach. In the initial phase of its launch itself, 19 telecom providers and 4 hardware providers are supporting the OS, which has given it an initial level of boost and presence in the Mobile OS space.
Firefox OS Architecture & Development Though Firefox OS is still in its development stage, there has been considerable amount of progress that has been made on the app development end of it. With the tools available by Mozilla, the developers can start working on the app development for this platform right away. As the applications are HTML5 based, organizations can leverage the talent and skill of their existing pool of resources to begin Firefox OS development. As the apps developed are based on the responsive layout concept, it ensures that the apps run fine on all mobile, tablet and even desktop devices. A Firefox OS application consists of multiple layers for handling different aspects of a mobile app. Gaia: This is the user interface level of the OS. This level has been written completely in HTML, CSS and JS. This makes it possible to run this level on other devices as well as web browsers to run the Firefox OS app. Gecko: Gecko is the layout engine after Gaia which helps in rendering of the HTML/CS/JS content of the apps. This layout engine is the same engine which has been used for years in Mozilla web browser for rendering web content. Gonk: Gonk is the layer which consists of a Linux Kernel and a user-space Hardware Acceleration Layer (HAL). Gonk enables access to phone features like: Camera, GPS etc.
Firefox OS Development at SoftProdigy Studying the market developments related to Firefox OS, SoftProdigy has quickly adapted itself to this new area of development. The company has already been working extensively on developing cross-platform mobile applications using development tools like: PhoneGap, Sencha Touch, jquery Touch etc. All these tools being HTML5 based have made it easy and quick for the developers to start developing applications for Firefox OS with a shorter learning curve. The team here at SoftProdigy has already developed 3 in-house applications to showcase expertise in this area. All these applications have been developed using the latest web standards for HTML5 development. The applications cater to different industry domains like: Tourism, Entertainment and Utility. About the Author Rahul Joshi Rahul Joshi is a Sr. Business Analyst with more than 5 years of experience in the IT industry. Started his career as a Software Engineer, he has worked extensively on front-end development technologies like: Flash and Flex. After moving into business analysis, he has been supporting clients from varied industry domains with technical consulting, focusing on areas like: Mobile Development, Rich Internet Applications and Gaming. About SoftProdigy Founded in 2006, SoftProdigy is an award-winning organization with expertise in the areas of Web & Mobile Technologies and Consulting services. Over the last few years, the organization has made a reputation for building quality solutions for its clients that helped them get more out of their business. SoftProdigy's customers range from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies such as Intel, Hyundai and Sony Ericsson. The company has worked with entrepreneurs as well as established corporate houses across the globe to put their ideas into inception and take it to the market. It employs over 150 technology and management professionals who work closely with each other. With a consistent growth track record that has surpassed the industry trends year on year since the company's inception, what sets it apart is the philosophy of pursuing, quoted as "measured success". For further details contact us at sales@softprodigy.com. References: http://www.netmagazine.com/features/10-things-developers-need-know-about-firefox-os https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/mozilla/firefox_os http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsid=20131&news=mozilla_firefox_os_guide_primer