[aaronharder]

One big difference from WebOS is that the company behind FirefoxOS will not likely abandon it within 12 months of kicking it off. 4th or 5th place in the market might represent enough scale to be considered a "success" as far as Mozilla is concerned.

[happycube]

The phones are also being built by multiple large ODM's, and not just one company that's barely staying afloat (Palm) or a company suffering at the time from a horrible CEO (HP)...

[pjmlp]

Those devices still need to be built. So a 4th or 5th place might not generate enough revenue to pay them.

[Yoric]

I'm not a manufacturer, but at a guess, I'd say that 4th/5th place is still plenty of billions of dollars.

[pjmlp]

That depends on the shareholders.

[rhelmer]

Which shareholders are you referring to?

[pjmlp]

From the manufacturing companies.

Even if it the profit is big, it might not be big enough compared with whatever else they might producing instead.