Mozilla won the browser war. Firefox lost the browser fight. But there's many wars left to fight, and I hope Mozilla dives into a new one.
As technology shifts to a world where most people do not have a monitor on their home computer or a screen on their phone, what it means to be a browser will dramatically change. Certainly, we could post-it the current user experience into whatever we will have tomorrow, but if VR, AR, Speech, and AI and ample cheap private computing power don't excite people for the future of browsers and user agency, I don't know what will.
I know we've been working on tech such as Servo for a long time, but sometimes even just being "better" isn't enough, especially when there's a large legacy gap to close. You also need to get lucky with a point where consumers are making massive changes and open to new things.
I think that time is much sooner than the "always 5--10 years quoted", and you're going to see mind-blowing things on the web in general and supported by the browser and related services specifically. And I'm betting (at least with my current career) that Mozilla will lead the charge.
What's next isn't clear to me
Secure messaging is also still a hot topic. Join forces with Signal or Wire or Matrix or XMPP. For example, Wire intends to open source their server code and enable federation [0].
Voice control requires some weight for an Open Source solution. Specifically, we could use something which does not rely on the internet. PocketSphinx is an ok foundation, but needs more work.
[0] https://medium.com/@wireapp/open-sourcing-wire-server-code-e...
However I would say that among those who do know, Lineage OS has a fairly good reputation for quality. You wouldn't be targeting mass adoption with this, you'd be targeting the influencers.
Apple lost it by getting boxed into a market share corner by android. Google lost it by losing control over android. Android OEM's lost it by getting stuck in a cutthroat competition. Microsoft lost it by being microsoft. Users lost it by having no good choices left (either go with the golden cage iphone, or go with the privacy and security mess android).
Apple was never likely to license iOS to other manufacturers, nor were they likely to have enough capacity to satisfy the whole market. I reckon they are where they always wanted to be: owning a very profitable and locked-in niche.
You mean the corner where they are the premium smartphone vendor, taking 90% share of global profits? That's a great corner to be boxed into :)
Because iOS users are a significant source of potential profit.
Apple doesn't need to maximize usage in order to control the ecosystem - they just need to maximize profit potential.
Now OEM have to obey to Google because losing the Google apps and services licence (thus losing the Play store and the whole ecosystem) basically means they're dead as an Android manufacturer.
That works in China because Google is relatively weak there. It also works for Amazon, which has its own store for Fire products.
The Vivaldi browser has copied the original Firefox user interface and stole the best ideas from the Firefox extension makers so if you want the Chromium web rendering engine with the original Firefox user interface you are served by the Vivaldi browser. Hopefully they will become profitable and release their modification under a free software license.