Re: 1. Updates and changes to Firefox OS/Connected Devices (George Roter)
The complete abandoning of Firefox OS for smartphones might just turn out to be
a strategic blunder. There are already very few contenders to break the
Apple/Google duopoly anyway and by Mozilla throwing out all support of fxos for
phones the open source community just lost another one.
It's good to have fxos as an alternative OS for IoT boards like the RPi but
there are far fewer boards than phone models and this balance will not change
dramatically in future. Yes, we will see more IoT control hardware but people
can still not make calls with these or will carry them around with them. Does
the official dev effort really need to focus on IoT exclusively?
Having a phone number is still pretty essential for interactions with
businesses/public institutions/schools/healthcare in most countries in the
world. People will keep carrying a phone everywhere as their primary
communications device.
How many people are going to take their IoT board with a SIM card module and
put that into their pocket in place of a smartphone? How much smaller are the
boards going to get? May these eventually replace smartphones as people add
modules that allow for telephony (or buy them already assembled like that)?
Isn't this just an IoT/phone combo then and we are back at square one by
effectively supporting the new 'IoT control board/phone' hybrid devices? Was
this the reasoning behind the decision to abandon official development on
phones?
And for the forseeable future people may still have a phone rather than a board
to control their home IoT appliances. Why wouldn't phones be the primary
platform to control IoT devices? We might as well interact with e.g a Philips
Hue API from a fxos phone rather than a Raspberry Pi or the like.
Finally, smart TVs are a dying technology, everything is moving to streaming;
all I need is a regular monitor. No need to focus efforts on these with
official builds, this can be taken care of by ports as community projects.
What are people's thoughts on the future of IoT devices? Are phones really
obsolete in this respect?
I see these as key devices in all aspects of communications for the time being
and would not abandon OS development on these so quickly.
Cheers,
Steffen
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