Hi David, On 9 February 2016 at 17:38, David Rajchenbach-Teller <dtel...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> 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. > I agree, I'm hoping the community can help me strengthen that pitch! > So let me ask the first few pitch questions :) > By asking great questions like these :) > 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. > The examples I give in the pitch are: - Smartphone users who want a simple secondary device - Late adopters - The elderly - Education - Hospitality The first two or three are my main focus. As I said, I think the tablet has reached a later stage of its product lifecycle <http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/the_life_cycle_of_a_.html> where consumers value user experience, convenience and reliability over technical specs and performance. Tablets have a longer replacement cycle than smartphones but the tablets being used today are going to need replacing eventually and when they do I think consumers are not going to be comparing products in the same way as they did when they bought their first tablet. Late adopters are also going to be looking for different things. I think the evidence shows that tablets have a different set of use cases to smartphones so I don't think smartphones alone are the answer. > > 2/ Who would build the hardware? Experience shows that working with > hardware partners is &*^%*&^ hard. > This is a good question, if we got past the prototyping stage with DIY flashing of existing tablets I'd like to work with a white label hardware vendor to build a Firefox branded product where we help define the hardware for small scale reference device. This could be quite expensive so I think we'd have a lot to prove before we got to that point. I do think the challenges of working with hardware partners could be less daunting without the added complication of carrier certification in the mix though. > > 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? > Another good question, and one of the reasons I've put this to the community. I know this is something I would use, would you? More features isn't always better. With the swiss army knife that is the smartphone that you carry around with you everywhere I think having lots of features is helpful, but for a tablet which is just one device of many in the context of the connected home I'd like it to do one thing and do it well. > 3/ What's the benefit for the Web and/or Mozilla's mission? > As others have mentioned, I think it's a shame that just as the web platform is reaching the point where a browser based OS is a feasible proposition, Mozilla has had to scale down our efforts in that area. Unfortunately web standards move more slowly than many product lifecycles. I think the technology landscape is finally where we need it to be and a browser-based tablet could help demonstrate the power of the web as a platform, and play a role in the Web of Things in your home. I feel strongly that Mozilla needs to be in this space, if nothing else to have a voice at the table when it comes to standardisation. Ben
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