Not that conflict is inevitable, and it's explicitly against the public mission statement of Mozilla, at least, but these platforms will still be competing with each other for the few devs and consumers who reject both iOS and Android (and WinPho, and BBOS, and Tizen...)
Long-term Ubuntu user here looking forward to retiring my Android phone for a Firefox model. I just got a Nexus 4 for my wife and for the first time ever didn't replace my phone at the same time.
If Firefox releases something a bit higher-end in the next 6-9 months I am very likely to switch.
On the one hand:
* Mozilla's at the helm. My privacy is more likely to be respected. * Whipping up Firefox OS apps is stupid simple.
On the other:
* They don't seem to want to target higher-end handsets. * There's no NDK and as far as I'm aware there are no plans for one. While most of my Android apps could be rebuilt easily in Firefox OS, the programs with 3D graphics or C library dependencies seem to be out of luck. * As an extension to the above, I can't write Firefox OS apps with Rust, which is shaping up to be a great language.
It's only the beginning and I think they are smart for doing this - iPhones are high-end and cheap Androids suck. The low-end market is still dominated by Symbian, or Bada, or Rex, or Asha, all of which suck.
They have a real shot at gaining significant market-share with this strategy. iOS and Android have too much inertia to beat by playing the high-end game.
Apple tried to go the same route with the original iPhone and there's a very good reason why it wasn't successful -- and it wasn't just the state of JavaScript technology at the time.
If Apple can't do without a native SDK and Google can't, I don't know why Mozilla thinks it can.
Apple is a for-profit corporation that makes money off its market for native apps.
Google is a for-profit corporation that makes money off its market for native apps.
Mozilla is a non-profit organization whose mission to advance the open web.
Different goals, different requirements.
I'm fine with Mozilla wanting to advance the web; but not at the cost of precluding the possibility of applications that need native SDKs.
I personally find your for-profit argument specious at best.
Well, no. Its not going to "go away", its not going to exist in the first place.
> There are real, quantifiable, technical reasons for having a native SDK
Sure, there are reasons for having one, they just happen to be reasons that are irrelevant to Mozilla's purpose.
> I'm fine with Mozilla wanting to advance the web; but not at the cost of precluding the possibility of applications that need native SDKs.
Sure, and that's why you might need a native SDK, not why Mozilla needs one.
I do not know if this will actually happen or if such pragmatism is actually required, but developers' needs are far from irrelevant.
Sure, but it will advance nothing that is in Mozilla's purpose if it has native apps rather than apps built with web technologies. Can a phone OS survive with just web technologies and not native apps? I think so, even though it won't do everything some people would like, and even though we're some ways off from the point that it is likely to be a strong competitor to the major players in that field.
The arguments that Firefox OS can't survive seem very similar to the ones that ChromeOS couldn't.
To ensure the survival of that platform, they're going to need a native alternative to the HTML5/JS or whatever non-native APIs they're providing.
Perhaps they'll be successful on low-end hardware where applications and games don't matter, but non-native stuff is a long ways from the battery life and performance metrics that native apps can provide.
The right tool for the right job. And non-native SDKs are not yet the right tool for every job.
Mozilla's purpose is to advance the open web. Firefox OS is a means to that end, promoting a platform with that name independent of its actual nature is not an end to itself.
> To ensure the survival of that platform, they're going to need a pragmatic alternative to the HTML5/JS APIs.
The entire premise of Firefox OS, and the only reason that offering it is consistent with Mozilla's organizational purpose, is that Mozilla believes that this is false.
> Perhaps they'll be successful on low-end hardware where applications and games don't matter,
That would be, IMO, a very big success in advancing Mozilla's mission, though probably less than they hope Firefox OS can provide.
> This "all web" viewpoint you seem to be sold on is not sufficiently pragmatic.
I'm not "sold" on it; I suspect that Firefox OS may well be premature. But that doesn't stop me from recognizing that a conventional mobile OS of the type you suggest Firefox should be, with native development along with web technologies, is completely useless for the purpose for which Mozilla exists.
> The right tool for the right job. And non-native SDKs are not yet the right tool for every job.
So? Firefox OS doesn't have to be suitable for every job for it to survive, or for it to advance Mozilla's purposes.
So I'll just leave with this comment:
A platform needs content to survive, and customers are clearly demanding content that currently requires native SDKs on other platforms. Therefore, I believe that Mozilla to have a platform that is commercially interesting must be pragmatic and accept that for the good of the platform, they will need some sort of native SDK. Even if that native SDK is severely limited in scope.
With that said, I will readily admit that Mozilla has made amazing progress. But I also strongly believe that is not yet sufficient to eliminate the need for native SDKs.
Why would you cripple yourself like this, though? Modern web technologies are far from ideal for doing websites, why would I extend the pain to offline apps?
So why on earth are they making a phone? It's a piece of hardware, kind of weird/painful that I still have to go through javascript. The best fix for this is compiling to javascript, which is distinctly unappealing.
I've tested FirefoxOS builds for more "high-end" devices (in quotes, because it is nothing like my Galaxy Nexus and your Nexus 4), namely the Geeksphone Peak and the Nexus S (a guy in my office is doing the port on his spare time, so I could play with it for a bit).
In terms of scrolling/panning/zooming, say, in a list, in the browser or on the home screen, the phone is basically at 60fps the time, the only slowdown I found were some GC pauses from time to time when doing some weird stuff (opening/closing apps like crazy to stress test the thing, basically, could slow the phone down) or browsing heavy webpages (in terms of js and CSS).
From dual core and up, the phone is really nice (I personally found the Geeksphone Keon to be too low in terms of specs, the experience was too far from my Android 4.2 device). Apps are coming (I would not have bet on a decent app map, but Nokia's solution is very decent, tbh, altough we certainly need more than a nice map app), hopefully we have something to announce later this year (I don't work on FirefoxOS specifically, I know as much as you do). I also know we also started working heavily on supporting hi-dpi devices [1].
[1]: The branch where the hi-dpi work is happening https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/tree/v1.1.0hd
You're phone's OS is almost entirely irrelevant with regard to privacy. The snooping that we know about (PRISM, AT&T selling private data, etc.) is happening at the carrier level.