Why Firefox OS May Change the Way Software Is Released
Arguably, two key news items from the mobile world in 2013 were the launch of Blackberry Z10 and more recently the announcement of Firefox OS-powered mobile devices. Although these devices differ in form or factor, the two events share one unintentional similarity: the locales in which the devices were first launched.
The US market doesn’t seem to be the first choice market for their initial launch. Blackberry Z10 was not launched in the United States primarily due to the US phone carriers' strict testing system. The Firefox OS devices will be launched in Brazil, Venezuela, Portugal, Spain, and Poland in the coming months.
One of the factors pertaining to the launch of Firefox OS in the non-US regions can be attributed to the realization of the importance of emerging markets. Though the margins per phone in these markets may be low, sheer volume of need more than makes up for the per unit margin loss.
Given the massive opportunities, organizations are widely looking to customize their offerings to meet the particular needs of the emerging markets. Offerings such as Firefox OS take this notion a step further when the base product itself is designed first for emerging markets. This represents a sort of paradigm shift—historically IT products were designed primarily for prime consumers in developed nations like the United States, the United Kingdom, etc.
The importance of emerging markets became evident last year when China surpassed the United States as the largest smartphone market in the world, and the United States probably won't see a Mozilla Firefox phone until 2014. One of the inferences from these events is that smartphones are no longer elitist and are being designed with emerging markets in mind.
The requirements of the emerging markets are quite different from those of settled markets. Apart from low cost, there are expectations for the phones to work on low bandwidth, to last longer (as people there won’t change phones every year), and to have ready and cheap access to apps. The advent of Firefox OS is based on these unique expectations from the market.
This could be understood from the following remarks from key Firefox OS contributor and spokesperson, Christian Heilmann: "Firefox OS kills the idea of mobile Web connectivity only being for the rich in the western world. Firefox OS does not assume a fast, stable and always available connection."
As Ravi Venkatesan says in his book Conquering the Chaos: Win in India, Win Everywhere, "If you want to succeed in the twenty-first century, you must succeed in emerging markets."
And for that to happen, among other things, organizations need to focus on product offerings that are localized. Firefox OS has already taken that first step, and if it manages to pull a success story, then it may potentially redefine the way IT products are designed and released.
