As I've written in this blog and in the past, I like Chromebooks for their advantages, but certainly understand their disadvantages. As for Acer's Chromebooks, I prefer the Samsung Chromebooks for a variety of reasons.
However, Acer said Chromebooks account for five to ten percent of its sales, and sales of Windows 8 laptops aren't doing well. That Chromebook figure might not be impressive in an absolute sense, but from the perspective of sales of a very niche concept that was laughed at, it's becoming less laughable. Also, Acer is considering selling Chromebooks in other markets.
Certainly there are problems with an all-Web cellular phone operating system, just as there with an all-Web laptop operating system. But just are there are cases for using Chromebooks, so there also could be reasons for a Firefox OS. I'm not predicting Firefox OS will succeed, but I think there could be useful features that might appeal to some enterprises, as I noted.
By the way, stay tuned for an upcoming blog where I discuss yet another new mobile OS.
Acer has hinted at some numbers regarding Chromebook sales. According to Jim Wong, the president of Acer, they have sold 50,000 units so far. I'm not particularly impressed with those stats.
I believe that Chrome OS and Firefox OS will provide developers a look into the future, but that the incumbent players will easily adopt these strategies to their own operating systems pretty easily. Anyone else agree?
Yes, we're seeing some companies developing products and services built specifically for Web access, although in many locations, the Internet isn't available or available at slow speeds.
I agree that phones should include better Internet voice/VoIP capabilities. For years the cellular operators have ignored voice, using it as a cash cow with no audio improvement. Airtime plans continue to emphasize large buckets of minutes -- that many people don't need -- in order to jack up the monthly price.
Very slowly some operators are offering HD voice. As I wrote about T-Mobile's new strategies, it will be offering HD voice. Sprint has been playing around with it in a single test market, and AT&T might offer it later this year.
As for truly unlimited data, no major cellular operator really wants to offer it, although, once again, T-Mobile will offer plans with no caps and no throttling; I'll believe it when I see it available for years, not as a limited-time marketing gimmick.
As for E911, I'm going to write a blog for another UBM site about new methods for communicating with emergency services.
After 15 years or more of the WWW, it seems like software and hardware manufacturers are finally settling down to building products that are web-oriented from the ground up. Initially, they built "web enabled" products, ones that were desktop but had Web Links added in, often in a cumbersome fashion. But now we've seen streamlining in all areas. The Chromebook is an entire laptop that only runs a browser. Microsoft announced it will be selling subscriptions to Office that runs only on the Web. Facebook has taken about 80% of web publishing activities and turned it into an easy to use format that can be used to create and read content by everyone from 8 to 80.
What I've seen of Firefox mobile seems to follow this trend. Another barrier to be broken would be really redefining the phone away from a two-way realtime voice system to a true Web device...along the lines of a tablet. That could mean for example only having a Wimax or LTE connection, unlimited broadband and maybe using text methods like speech to text even in a 911 call (it might actually work better...sending addresses and phone numbers and license plates is alot easier with text).
Firefox OS in an intriguing operating system, but it's still in the early stages and it remains to be seen whether anything much will come of it. It will require a great deal of support from handset manufacturers and cellular operators as well as ongoing updates from Mozilla.
Most China-made feature phones can run Java apps. I wonder why Mozilla didn't just make a Java browser that implements its OS as well? Seems like the fastest way to get into the feature phone market.
That sounds like a good option for enterprises, as well as for Firefox. They have fallen behind their counterparts with the likes of IE and Chromed improvements. It will be interesting to see what happens next with it.
I agree that Microsoft was smart by charging a low price for Windows 8 upgrades. I have Windows 7 and I might keep it for a long time!
Of course, Apple has always charged much less for its Mac OS X upgrades. Also, Apple generally ensures that iPhone upgrades will work with the last two or even three phones. But Microsoft/Nokia angered lots of early adopters who bought Lumias and found they couldn't get Windows Phone 8.
It will be interesting to see the progress of Firefox OS phones, and whether they will receive timely and continuing OS upgrades. The OS vs. HTML5 app situation applies, as well. This assumes, however, that Firefox OS phones will obtain some success in the market, which isn't at all assured.
One of the things I think Microsoft got right in the Windows 8 offering was the inexpensive upgrade path (that ends today). Allowing people to upgrade to the latest software, even if they had stayed with a much older operating system, was a brilliant move.
Innovation is a great thing. But some backward compatililty is to be desired, too.
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The smartphone market reached a significant milestone, a breakthrough that may cause vendors to celebrate but could strain the capabilities of IT service desks.
In the fall of 2011, around 160,000 students in 190 countries enrolled in a Stanford-sponsored online course about artificial intelligence. About 23,000 completed the course and got certificates, including 248 who got a perfect score. The university offered the same course the old-fashioned way to students sitting in Stanford classrooms. None of the those students got a perfect score.
As Mitch Wagner discussed today, Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr. The big Internet debate at the moment is whether Tumblr will be good or bad for Yahoo. Regardless of their stances on the future of Yahoo itself, many claim that Yahoo will somehow ruin Tumblr.
Has China stolen a march on the West, developing an Internet architecture that is not only based on IPv6, but is also inherently secure from both internal and external attack?
Recently, the Obama administration has been of two minds where privacy rights are concerned. On one hand, you have an administration that vowed to veto CISPA and mandated open data for government websites. On the other hand, you have an increasingly out-of-control Department of Justice on a fishing expedition at AP and demanding legislation to let the FBI wiretap private, encrypted communications and levy fines if a company fails to comply.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
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