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Comment by tsycho | Hacker News Reader

While this is awesome, the bigger problem in India is that data plans are often prohibitively expensive, and the people who can afford data plans prefer swankier phones (since the phone is a status symbol). But this is a good start, so best of luck :)

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Just back from a trip to India (from there originally), and don't quite agree with you that data plans are expensive. There is a lot of competition, and both talk time and data are quite affordable IMO. I pre-paid for 1GB of data and ~4 hours of talk time for just 250 INR (about $4).

Pretty much everyone in India - rich or poor - has a mobile phone these days. However, unlike the service, phones cost just as much as they do elsewhere so the poor usually end up using crappy feature phones with limited data support. A $25 smartphone with full web support would make an incredible difference IMO.

Presumably, a thin client will transfer more data than a thick client. Potentially, making that cost significant.

Though maybe it has some clever caching system that reduces this?

I wouldn't call FirefoxOS a "thin client" (if that's what you meant) - it has a concept of "packaged apps" in which the app and all its assets are packaged and downloaded to the phone, and loaded from there. The built-in "certified" apps (like Phone, Music, Calendar and so on) don't require loading anything from the network at all, for instance.

You can think of FirefoxOS apps the same way conceptually you'd think of them on Android/iOS, except they are always written in open web technologies (HTML/JS/CSS).

App developers do have the option to provide "hosted" apps to the store (which is basically a regular web page but without browser chrome), however even in this case writing HTML5 apps that work offline is totally doable using existing cross-browser standards.

it really depends on the app developer. He can use packaged apps and go full offline or use HTML5 AppCache and go offline with annoyances :-)

In any way, the developer is in charge of how much bandwidth he uses.

Well the poor don't necessarily end up with bad phones, there are a few indigenous phone manufacturers like Micromax [1], Maxx Mobile [2], Spice [3], Intex [4] etc. that have carved out a market for themselves in the past few years. These brands manufacture phones with features quite comparable to "good" smart phones and are comparatively very affordable. So, unless the consumer is brand conscious, its possible to get a smart phone with decent features and data support at affordable prices.

In fact, Spice and Intex are the manufacturers that Mozilla has partnered to produce the $25 smart phones.

[1] http://www.micromaxinfo.com/mobiles/smartphones [2] http://www.maxxmobile.in/mobiles/smart-phones [3] http://www.si2imobility.com/spicemobiles/ [4] http://www.intexmobile.in/Product.aspx?PCatId=3

You are forgetting about the cost of living and average income. While 250 INR ($4) is not that big an amount for you. Spending that much amount for just 1GB of 3G data may not be feasible/easy for a lot of people this phone is aimed at.

Like someone mentioned above, if you can afford the data plans, you would never go for this phone. The biggest hurdle I can see for this phone will be providing access to the internet.

Data plans are not too expensive in India. One can get 1GB plan for 3G data in Rs.139-Rs.160 ($2.35-$2.7) depending on the service provider. A lot of people are not using data plans as they don't have good phones. Most of the cheap handsets in the market are very slow and lack features that needs data.

Is Indian cellphone provider market monopolized? Isn't there a chance that with higher demand competition will lower prices for data plans in India?

Yes, the Indian cellular market is competitive and aggressive.

There is certainly a good chance that data plan prices will lower with higher demand.

Data plans are getting affordable now. State carrier BSNL offers 1GB for Rs 139. Thats roughly 2.341 USD

How common are free wifi hotspots? I assume the FF phone will still have wifi.

New govt plans free wifi in public places. Would be a boost to smartphone industry. http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-06-09/news...

The phones have WIFI

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