Tomi Ahonen, a mobile industry analyst, writes long analyses of the phone market, Nokia's decline and Stephen Elop's tenure as Nokia CEO.
Commenters recommend it for global mobile market numbers and for history of the late-1990s onward phone industry, and for its harsh criticism of Elop.
None of the other major mobile operating systems (open or closed) have the same cachet as Mozilla. In particular, Mozilla has gone to great lengths to zealously cultivate a consistent image of web-centric ideals above pretty much all else. Other mobile operating systems are tainted by corporate interests, even if only in [mis]perception alone when compared against Mozilla.
Mozilla has been trying to reinvent itself and adapt to the mobile onslaught. Increasingly, mobile is being seen as the gateway to billions of people coming online. Mozilla's mission is to "promote openness, innovation and opportunity on the web", and they have seen that desktops are being outsold by mobile units[1] and transitioned accordingly.
FirefoxOS is the foundation's big bet on mobile. Beyond just Mozilla's unique position(ing) in the mobile marketplace, IMO the biggest difference between FirefoxOS and other open source mobile operating systems is that they are betting most of the farm on this. Although the article references that "Firefox OS is a strategic project for Mozilla", I believe that Mozilla's long-term success and relevance will hinge on the success of their Firephones.
Frankly, I'm really happy and amazed that they've been able to get the number of carriers publicly announcing support in this manner that they did for distribution.
Carriers (not necessarily all of the ones listed) don't like how their brands are being potentially diluted and damaged by end-user Android upgrade hell.…
Mr Kennerly, I feel you're being a little disingenuous here. A couple of days ago (before the police involvement) you mentioned this story in another article on your blog(http://www.litigationandtrial.com/2010/04/articles/series/special-comment/lost-iphones-and-goldman-sachs-filtering-deception-through-middlemen/), saying Gawker Media, publisher of Gizmodo, paid $10,000 to the "finder" of a "lost" prototype iPhone. ($10k was the original rumor about the sum paid).
Now, if I may paraphrase, you're saying 'all this for a single phone that is going to be sold to millions anyway? pfff.' But you know it's a prototype, if you've followed the story closely, you know that Gawker did publish "more than information the appearance of the phone": http://gizmodo.com/5520876/the-next-iphone-dissected - such things are not readily ascertainable by proper means, so I don't think IDX v Epic systems is a good comparison.
You say there are 'thousands of businesses [that have been wronged] and yet Apple [...] gets preferential treatment.' I can't agree. A quick search of justice.gov for the terms ''economic espionage' arrested' - a different jurisdiction, to be sure, but a similar kind of enforcement - yields over 100 cases of the police power being used on behalf of companies' intellectual property - and as we both know, a comprehensive search through legal databases would turn up many more. We both know that IP theft or misappropriation isn't about the physical devices, DVDs or sheets of…
On the other hand, it is easier to walk a well-worn path, especially with money in hand. Samsung has the best hand here. Reading http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/08/smartphone-market-shares-q2-full-numbers-samsung-and-android-solidifying-their-leads.html, it has 30% of the world market for smartphones. The big problem would not be replacing Google Play, but replacing Google Maps and, to a lesser extent, GMail. In the current climate, one would not think it, but I do not rule out reading a 'Samsung and Apple collaborate in mapping' or 'Samsung and Microsoft collaborate in mapping' headline in a few years time.
Also, companies can mutate 'their DNA'; it is not frozen at birth. For example, the Tabulating Machines Company (nowadays called IBM) has reinvented itself several times, and Nintendo started as a manufacturer of playing cards, and DSM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM_(company)) started life as 'The State Mines' and mined coal, but now is, quoting their site "a global science-based company active in health, nutrition and materials".
Sure and how many will they sell next year? Mario games, as a whole, have sold more than 210 million units: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario
One single ringtone, Crazy Frog, made its creators a cool half billion back in 2006: http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/09/welcome-stephen-elop-to-best-job-in-high-tech-new-ceo-for-nokia.html Sometimes you're just in the right place at the right time. Also, price/availability makes a huge difference--how many platforms was Angry Birds sold on and how much did it cost compared to Mario?
Lady Gaga may outsell the Beatles this year, but in 2015 it's almost near certain the Beatles/Elvis/Frank Sinatra and other classics will still be selling. There is always going to be a demand for new product, but the iconic games/bands/movies are still as relevant as before and there will be demand to have these classics ported to the new medium.
Your app is actually more successful than most of the apps in the App Store: the median annual income per app is less than $1000. See http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/06/full-analysis-of-iphone-economics-its-bad-news-and-then-it-gets-worse.html for a good analysis. Income in the app store is distributed according to a power law, which means that the most successful apps make thousands of times more than the average. They are the lottery winners, and nothing you do is likely to put your single app in that category.
On the bright side, you've created a cash cow. It requires little maintenance and generates about $100/month. To get that same return from an investment, you'd need a sizable chunk of cash, probably in excess of $25,000. So don't think of your app as a failure, think of it as a $25,000 trust fund. Now go out and create some more.
> He is vilified simply because he became the last CEO of a beloved empire which was already gasping for it's last breaths
That's being overly generous to Elop. The 'Burning Platform' memo was by his own volition and it played a big part in the decline. This essay nails what Elop did wrong[1] (a bit over-the-top though). Namely, he called his own product crap, and when he distributed the memo, Nokia had no solution ready - they were waiting on Microsoft (Osborne effect). "Hey guys, our phones are currently crap. That Maemo phone you're about to buy - we're discontinuing it. We will have awesome ones sometime in the future though. Remember to by a Nokia ;-)".
1. http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/08/coining-term-elop-effect-when-you-combine-osborne-effect-and-ratner-effect.html