Hi
all,
Firefox
OS is an important part of our mobile strategy, in addition to Fennec and other
initiatives. With Firefox OS we have the opportunity to demonstrate that the
Web as an open, standards-based platform can provide a competitive alternative
to proprietary, single-vendor platforms. This is core to who we are, and
critical to the future of a healthy mobile ecosystem. By promoting choice and
innovation in mobile we can help to build the Internet as a global public
resource that's open and accessible to all.
By
building an OS we can "own" a platform and ensure that a free, open mobile
platform always exists. This is important as it means that not only can we
create a wedge in the market to keep it open, we don't have the risk of Google,
Apple or others locking us out. It also provides us a way to propose and test
new Web standards, with real content and workloads.
Where are we?
Over
the last three years, we have moved mountains to create interest in the
commercial ecosystem (e.g. strategic partnerships with Qualcomm, Telefonica,
and more) that is critical for our work to succeed. We launched phones across a
wide price range, from ultra-low-cost to high-end, in dozens of countries. And
we delivered first and second generation evolutions of Firefox OS as we rapidly
iterated from prototype to product. We've proven that the core of web
technology can be a strong, viable platform for mobile.
This
was an immense accomplishment, only possible through the herculean efforts of
Mozillians (i.e. staff and volunteers) around the world, and provides us with a
good foundation on which to build.
Now
it is time to take the next step. We will use this foundation to build
products with partners that help people take control of and explore the full
potential of their online lives, while empowering people with technology,
know-how and opportunityto advance the Open Web. That will require
bringing more of Mozilla and the Open Web to consumers than just the Web
technologies upon which our products are built.
We
will seek out opportunities that align with our relentless pursuit of the
Mozilla mission, our strategy of building great products and empowering people,
and the impact we aim to have on the world. And we will say "no" to
opportunities, even if they make good business sense, if they do not further
our mission.
Historical Parallels
The
first few years of Firefox browser development weren't even on Firefox: they
were on Gecko, an all-new modern layout engine and browser infrastructure at
the time. Today, with Firefox OS, we have succeeded in developing an all-new
modern smartphone OS infrastructure. We have created the raw material
that can be used by ourselves and others to create products and services that
end users will want. This represents a significant investment over several
years, and enables us to penetrate the mobile market.
Just
as a strategy of offering the lowest price browser would have failed,
especially against Microsoft, the strategy of merely offering the lowest price
smartphone won't succeed. It's not possible for a small vendor to compete only
on price with an army of titans. It's always cheaper to order things by the
million than by the thousand.
Firefox
won converts by providing compelling end-user value: it was clean, simple,
fast, secure and open standards based and offered innovations (e.g. tabbed
browsing, pop-up blocking, etc.) that advanced the power of the online
experience while at the same time reducing some of its annoyance. Likewise, for
Firefox OS to win converts, it needs to offer compelling advantages to users
(i.e. the right combination of product features, desired apps, pricing, etc.)
that will drive people to seek out our products, especially in the face of
sophisticated competition from the most aggressive and largest technology
companies in the world.
And
in the same way that Firefox advanced the Mozilla mission by helping secure an
open Internet for everyone, Firefox OS must also advance the Mozilla mission.
The Next Phase: Ignite Initiative
We
will consolidate all of our development efforts (including previous v2 feature
work, v3 platform work, IoT explorations, Lightsaber, and more) around a new
core development initiative. Our intent is to focus our time and energy on
fully unlocking our full product potential and mission alignment.
The
Ignite initiative will focus on building a unified product experience
and developer platform that exemplifies our values and the best of the Web. We
will build the ultimate phone experience for the hundreds of millions of people
who love Firefox, who care about having a secure, trusted, independent
alternative that is hackable, customizable and powerful as an open platform for
innovation.
Like
we did with Firefox on the desktop, we will build this core product experience
ensuring that it is clean, modern and easy to use, and yet powerful through its
extensibility, clever design and features that put users in control of their experience.
We will enable the mobile equivalent of "View Source", revamp our security
model to expose more of the new mobile Web APIs to developers and enable an
extension mechanism to add to the user interface and phone capabilities.
This
will be the phone that you want to use, and will use every day. We will
activate our full community to participate in building this mobile experience,
and use it as the basis for delivering the next generation of Firefox OS
devices to the world, from the first time smartphone buyer to the technically
sophisticated early adopter over time.
We
will provide direct distribution of Ignite builds to early adopters with
existing unlocked Android devices, as part of our new development model to
build community and influence. And we will resource dedicated product
development and release teams to build products based upon the Ignite
core to address specific market opportunities (e.g. entry-level smartphones,
smart TVs, etc.) that we will then distribute through our partners.
To accomplish this, we will embrace a new set of
Strategic Design Principles:
1) We will build phones and connected devices
that people want to buy because of the experience, not simply the price.
2) We will focus on depth first vs. breadth
first. Our
goal will be to on achieve real meaningful success and significant traction
within our target market segments. We won't allow ourselves to be distracted,
and we won't expand to new segments until significant traction is demonstrated.
(It's important that we establish a beachhead to build from, and that
we're following through all the way from delivering the initial product to
achieving real market success and end-user delight and advocacy.)
3) We will build products that feel like
Mozilla. We must define, build and own the product experience to ensure it
delivers upon our brand promise and principles. This is critical to ensure that
we're building product expertise and that we're able to deliver ever more value
to our end-users and activate other distribution partnerships to reach even
more people.
4) We will deliver compelling content and app
experiences that exceed consumer expectations. We will continue to
invest in Web platform capabilities and programs to incentivize developers to
build for the Web. And to bridge this app gap between user expectations
and the readiness of the ecosystem, we will explore implementing Android app
compatibility, within a framework that keeps our long-term focus on the Web
as the platform across desktop, mobile and connected devices. This mirrors
our earlier strategy with Firefox in the face of Internet Explorer market
dominance, and we believe this is a necessary step to the web flourishing as a
mobile ecosystem.
5) We will ensure that when you buy a Firefox
OS-powered phone you're joining our global community. Empowering people with
technology, know-how and opportunity is key to our success, and we must provide
product experiences that invite users into our community from enabling people
to hack and customize their phone experience to providing local engagement for
support, education and more.
6) We will ensure that the products we build are
timely, technically excellent and high quality. In order for our
products to be great and loved by people they be available when and where they
expect them, and they must meet or exceed their expectations in terms of
performance and reliability, at all price points. We must aim to build products
that we're proud of.
These
principles come out of discussions with many of you and the learnings from the
v3 iteration process, as well as our understanding of the industry. We want to
spend some time reviewing these together and then declare them part of our
official working plan. We can use these to align our strategy and approach with
the Mozilla mission and to evaluate product opportunities.
What's next?
- We will immediately begin work on consolidating our product and development roadmap as part of the Ignite initiative. This includes the already identified v3 architecture and platform work (e.g. service workers, revamped updates, etc.) with an initial focus on performance and stability.
- We will put our best foot forward. As with any new major product or platform, the 2.0 version runs circles around the 1.0 version. We will focus on technologies and business decisions to aggressively move our OEM partners to use our latest releases only.
- We will ship v2.2 and all pending work to deliver entry-level smartphones with our key partners. Additional appropriate feature work will be rolled into Ignite. v2.2 will be maintained as a long-lived branch with security and stability updates only.
- We will reconsider the ultra-low-cost smartphone program (e.g. Tarako) We have not seen sufficient traction for a $25 phone, and we will not pursue all parts of the program. We will focus on efforts that provide a better user experience, rather than focusing on cost alone.
- We will eat our own fox food. It's incredibly hard to build, make decisions and provide feedback on a product you don't use every day. A key part of the Ignite program will be empowering all Mozillians to actively participate in its development. While we won't be able to live and breathe on each and every target device for our core product and technology, we can on phones that are powerful enough for each of us to make our primary phone.
- We will dive deep into fully exploring the feature phone opportunity identified earlier this year. We need to identify a Mozilla product that we are proud of that fulfills our strategic design principles and that carriers are eager to ship.
- We will continue explore IoT and connected device opportunities. We need to fully explore the opportunity to deliver product and platform value to end-users and developers in these emerging device categories.
- We will aggressively invest in the Firefox OS opportunity. We will invest the necessary financial resources required to accomplish this new focused plan while ensuring we have clear line of sight to return on that investment, especially in terms of the Mozilla mission impact.
Onwards and Upwards
Changing
the world is often glamorized. But at its heart, it's very hard work with an unpredictable
path. I'm very aware of the stress all Mozillians, particularly those
closely associated with Firefox OS, have endured the last few years. Anyone who
thought it would be easy to take on, not only the three most formidable players
in the tech industry, but in any industry, surely has learned otherwise.
But
Mozilla has faced this situation before, and won. This is what we do: take on
and triumph when pretty much everyone from competitors and pundits, to trolls
and more think we're crazy.
Firefox
OS is critical to ensure the Web remains the single greatest public resource
the world has ever known. Please join me in the next phase of the fight.
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