Mozilla: Firefox Mobile could be demise of Apple's App Store, Huh?

By on Dec 18, 2009 at 11:49 AM
Software December 18, 2009

Mozilla Fennec Logo

We’re not sure if the good people at Mozilla have been drinking the same Kool-Aid® as the folks developing Chrome OS or if they are just out of their blessed minds. Mozilla is touting that its mobile version of Firefox, currently codenamed Fennec, could be the beginning of the end for mobile app stores like Apple’s App Store and Android’s Market. Mozilla VP of mobile Jay Sullivan told PC Pro, “Anyone who knows JavaScript and HTML can develop a great app without having to learn a specific mobile platform.” Now, our memories aren’t that great, but didn’t Apple already try this when the iPhone first came out? Isn’t this what Palm’s entire SDK is made of? Didn’t one Steve Jobs upon launching the first iPhone proclaim, that we don’t need native applications, web apps will do everything we want? So as it turns out, he did, and they didn’t. Sullivan continues, “in the interim period, apps will be very successful. Over time, the web will win because it always does.” Are they visionaries or is it a pipe dream from a company whose bread and butter revolves around the browser?  We will see.

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  • Cingulair

    One point everybody is missing is when web apps become that dominant, why have a bunch of different OS? It won’t matter. Alot of good companies will surely disappear as well as competition. It’s actually kind of scary. We’ll all be connected like remote control drones or something.

    Posted from BGR Mobile (iPhone) at: Tuckahoe Atlantic Ocean

  • Ankit

    I don’t get why everyone feels Mozilla is making wild claims. What they are planning is in essence what Chrome OS is supposed to achieve. And they’re right: the web is going to win, as it always has. Having to recode a powerful website such as Facebook or Mint for the sake of mobile devices is out of the question, and mobile apps meant to emulate the functionality is a PITA with the different devices and APIs, which ends up diluting the crap out of these device specific apps (see Facebook for Android and BB).

    It’s only a matter of time before mobile devices will be able to render full webapps flawlessly, so any efforts to help standardize mobile app development via webapps will only get us to the desired goal quicker.

  • sid

    don’t forget all these apps do is connect to the net and bring it down in a finger friendly format, if mozilla can do that from the start what do you need apps for

    just as an example the using the browser in the n900 has replaced most of the apps on my iphone, just because now i can access a full website rather than a mobile one

  • latinjersey

    how bout mozilla release fennec already and stop talking shit.

    Posted from BGR Mobile (iPhone).

  • BChau

    HTML, Flash and Adobe AIR can potentially unify the development across platform and mobile devices (with the exception of iPhone which is a very closed platform).

    • pasta

      when Flash/AIR make netbook sweat bullets, what makes you think it will be implemented on mobile devices in a large scale fashion?

      html 5 is a good possibility.

  • Brin

    “Over time, the web will win because it always does.”

    I guess the spokesman is thinking even MS has probably been unsuccessful in the long run in protecting the Windows API … which is why they destroyed Netscape.

    http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html

    But smartphones are a different situation.

    It’s not clear that doing everything in the browser suits a device with a tiny screen. Besides, the drawback to “everything in the browser” is “adverts in your face”. Gmail is cheaper than MS Outlook, but it comes at a cost of adverts in your face … oh, and invasion of privacy, since Google scans email to know *which* ads to show users.

    Perhaps an app that is actually designed to do a specific job — and that just does what you want is what you want on a phone. Most of what’s in the app store is cheap enough.

  • http://www.definitivemind.com James Katt

    Looks like someone drank their own Kool Aid.

    Web Apps will never succeed because not everyone is 100%, 24/7, hooked to the internet.

    Thus, when you are in a tunnel, in an out of the way area, on an airplane, out to see on a cruise ship, etc. etc., Web Apps FAIL FAIL FAIL.

    Web Apps are also never as fast nor can they be as feature filled nor as tightly integrated with the rest of the computer as native apps can be. It simply cannot be since they are not natively compiled.

    Sorry, but as the original iPhone showed, people do not like web apps.

    Try to run an office when your ISP fails or when Google goes on the fritz.

    Try to run an office when your data gets lost by your cloud service.

    Sorry, Web Apps suck big time.

  • http://www.definitivemind.com James Katt

    Moreover,

    People do not want to pay for Web Apps.

    Web Apps are suppose to be FREE.

    Thus, how can a developer make money? Yeah right. They won’t.

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