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by DavidFlint 3283 days ago
They were both growing rapidly in a brand new market. What I am proposing is a solution for low budget OS to have ANY chance against duopoly. If Mozilla would allow painless wrapping Android apps, I bet their platform would be in a different place now. I remember my non-technical friends saying they like Mozilla for price etc, but they won't get it as there is no apps.
1 comments
fabrice_d 3283 days ago
I don't think you're right. What killed FxOS was not a lack of wrapper to run Android apps (we actually got one that worked).

What makes or break a Mobile OS is the availability of the key apps for the market you're going after: whatsapp, FB, Twitter, etc. (that varies based on the region).

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detaro 3283 days ago
> What killed FxOS was not a lack of wrapper to run Android apps (we actually got one that worked).

Was that ever released? I saw it on Mozilla employees' dev phones, but nowhere else.

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fabrice_d 3283 days ago
I don't think you ever saw the one I'm talking about. It was done in collaboration with a partner and was never released. Also, lawyers were involved ;)

You likely saw the other attempt using the J2ME-in-js implementation: https://github.com/mozilla/pluotsorbet

That was too slow and never shipped in commercial devices either.

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