Mozilla to reveal allies for its challenge to Android and iOS

Mozilla to reveal allies for its challenge to Android and iOS

By Stephen Shankland.

Expect partners for Mozilla's Boot to Gecko, a mobile OS for Web apps, to emerge at Mobile World Congress. B2G has big challenges, but there are no easy ways into the mobile market.

Firefox developer Mozilla will reveal partners later this month for its Boot to Gecko project, an ambitious attempt to build a browser-based operating system for mobile devices.

At first glance, it's easy to write off Boot to Gecko (B2G) as doomed from the start. When it comes to taking on iOS and Android, WebOS was a dud, BlackBerry OS is struggling, and Microsoft is carving out a niche for Windows Phone only by dint of extraordinary effort.

But B2G has a couple things going for it. First, it's a browser-based operating system, meaning that Web apps become its native apps. With legions of Web programmers already at work and increasingly attuned to mobile browsing, B2G isn't starting from scratch.

Second, it turns out, B2G has allies.

"B2G is partnering up," Mozilla Chief Technology Officer Brendan Eich said in a tweet. "More at MWC," he added, referring to the frenzied Mobile World Congress show that starts in a week and a half in Barcelona, Spain.

Having Web developers as allies is nice, but having strong partners is essential--especially because Mozilla plans for B2G products to arrive in the second quarter. Without a vehicle to deliver B2G into users' hands, the software will be mostly irrelevant.

And Mozilla doesn't want to be on the sidelines. The non-profit's mission is to keep the Web open, and it can't do that without some leverage on the actual technology used. Firefox on personal computers has served Mozilla's purpose, but Chrome and Microsoft bring new competition there, and Mozilla hasn't had much success so far gaining a foothold on the mobile Web.

B2G partners

So who might become a B2G partner? I'm guessing that the most likely candidates are the mobile network operators, aka carriers. They hold a powerful position in the mobile market, in particular because their strong retail presence is often the channel that delivers phones into customers' hands. But they've seen handset makers such as Apple and software companies such as Google usurp much of their power.

Indeed, last year at Mobile World Congress, 24 mobile operators launched the Wholesale Applications Community, an effort to promote Web apps that can run on any phone. WAC is essentially an attempted end-run around Apple's App Store and Google's Android Marketplace. WAC allies include AT&T, Verizon Wireless, NTT DoCoMo, Deutsche Telekom, China Mobile, and Vodafone.

WAC hasn't dented Apple and Google dominance when it comes to mobile apps. But it does show that some powerful players have an appetite for Web-app technology as a way to counterbalance the stronger players. Perhaps some of them see B2G as a new way to serve this goal.

Carriers today are in danger of being relegated to the role of retailer and dump pipe, with not much influence over online services, app stores, and other cash-generating possibilities. No doubt carriers would like to return to the days when they exerted a lot more power over the mobile marketplace.

B2G in the limelight

B2G is one of Mozilla's top 2012 priorities that the browser maker unveiled earlier this week. The organization's overarching goal is to try to break the ecosystem lock-in that can trap customers into a technology stack extending from device hardware through the operating system and reaches up to services and app stores.

B2G plays a role in Mozilla's plan to use Web apps to break the lock-in.

"A truly Web-based OS for mobile phones and tablets would enable the ultimate in user choice and developer opportunity, both from a technology and an ecosystem point of view," said Jay Sullivan, Mozilla's vice president of products of the plan. "Boot to Gecko is a project to build a OS that runs HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS directly on device hardware without the need for an intermediate OS layer."

According to Mozilla's B2G road map, the organization wants to demonstrate the mobile software in the first quarter of 2012 and build it into products in the second quarter.

Software distribution is a higher-level part of the ecosystem that Mozilla hopes to crack. First, it's got plans for its own coming marketplace. Second, it's working on technology that would let other app stores work with it, so people who buy a Web-app game from one won't have to re-purchase it later from another.

And the operating system layer is also key. As with Chrome OS, Google's laptop-oriented browser OS, programmers write software that runs on the browser. The devices don't expose the underlying sub-browser OS (Linux in BTG's case) that handles hardware details such as displaying pixels, paying attention to multitouch gestures, or putting a processor to sleep when it's idle.

But to make a smartphone useful, new services are needed beyond what browsers traditionally have offered. Thus Mozilla's WebAPI effort to provide interfaces so apps running in the browser can dial the phone, operate the camera, send and receive text messages, manage an address book, dim or brighten the screen, and monitor battery levels.

Until recently, the WebAPI work was somewhat at odds with a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) project caled Device API (DAP) that's backed by browser maker Opera and others. In January, though, Mozilla agreed to marry its WebAPI project with DAP.

And of course the browser itself is at the center of the project. Mozilla has been working for years on a mobile browser project called Fennec, but has been thwarted when the operating systems it supported fell by the wayside. Now it's got Firefox working on on Android, though.

Many of ingredients necessary for Mozilla's mobile success are therefore coming together. The next steps, though--persuading partners to commit strongly, and attracting developers, and winning customers--are out of the organization's direct control.

Cracking the mobile market is tough. But with Firefox effectively barred from iOS and Windows Phone and not installed by default on Android, Mozilla has no easier ways to steer the mobile market.

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BlackBerry faces new challenge from U.S. agency

BlackBerry faces new challenge from U.S. agency

By Alastair Sharp.

(Reuters) - In another blow for beleaguered BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, the U.S. federal government's main procurement agency is issuing iPhones and Android-based devices to some of its 17,000 workers.

While the General Services Administration does not impose its purchasing decisions on other parts of the government, the terms and conditions it negotiates can be used as a blueprint for other agencies.

"We actively seek to be progressive in our adoption of new technologies so that we can learn the lessons which will inform our client and customer agencies as they seek to go down a similar path," the GSA's chief information officer, Casey Coleman, told Reuters in a phone interview on Tuesday.

Once Washington's only option for secure mobile communication, RIM has struggled to offset a rising tide of companies allowing their workers to use their own devices for work or supplying them with rival devices, which have made strides towards matching the BlackBerry's famed security.

The GSA - which manages $500 billion of government assets including telecom, information technology and real estate - is also testing the use of employees' personal smartphones and tablets on their secure networks, a popular move for corporations looking to cut costs.

Coleman said that BlackBerry remains by far the most used smartphone at GSA, with devices from Apple and those using Google's Android software accounting for less than 5 percent of the agency's fleet, which covers the majority of GSA employees.

The personal smartphone pilot is to supplement rather than replace government-issued devices, she said, and the GSA has no plans to abandon RIM servers, which manage secure BlackBerry traffic.

RIM charges a fee for use of its servers and data centers, which compress and encrypt email and other sensitive data.

The GSA's move is just the latest hurdle to face Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM.

Another U.S. agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said last week it would ditch the servers that run its BlackBerrys by June as it trimmed costs.

Oilfield services company Halliburton plans to switch 4,500 BlackBerry-toting employees to iPhones, saying it's is better suited to its needs. Several banks have also welcomed BlackBerry rivals.

The NOAA move was made possible after it switched its desktop-based software to Google Apps for Government.

Coleman said the GSA moved to Google Apps in June, cutting its costs in half compared with its legacy desktop software.

The GSA plans to offer a service so other agencies can quickly order Web-based email, she said.

"This is an area that is changing and evolving rapidly and as the market changes we will continue to seek to provide our employees with the best devices for them to do their best work."

BlackBerry Dealt Blow as U.S. Procurement Agency Issues IPhones to Staff

By Hugo Miller.

The General Services Administration, the U.S. government's main procurement agency, has begun issuing iPhones alongside BlackBerrys, delivering another knock to Research In Motion Ltd.'s once dominant position in Washington.

The GSA, with 12,635 employees, supplies more than US$70-billion worth of products and services to other federal agencies a year. GSA staff may now request Apple Inc. phones and devices running Google Inc.'s Android software if they have applications that can help them work more efficiently with customers like the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, said Deborah Ruiz, a GSA spokeswoman. She didn't say when the change took effect.

The move highlights the challenge facing Thorsten Heins, RIM's new chief executive officer, who has vowed to rethink the way the company markets and sells BlackBerrys to reverse slumping demand. Sales in the U.S. fell 45% last quarter as consumers and businesses opted for iPhones or Android devices for their better Web browsers and wider array of apps.

The U.S. decline is dragging down RIM's global market share even as sales in emerging markets like India and Indonesia climb. RIM's share of the worldwide smartphone market slid to 8.2% in the fourth quarter from 14% a year earlier, while Apple's share rose to 24% from 16% in the same period, according to research firm IDC.

Jamie Ernst, a spokeswoman for RIM, didn't have any immediate comment.

Approved Devices

The sales drop has led to a 90% plunge in Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM's share price from its 2008 high. RIM fell 0.7% to US$14.80 at 11:41 a.m. New York time. Shares of Cupertino, California-based Apple gained 0.4% to US$504.81.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said last week it would support BlackBerrys until May and then begin replacing them with iPhones. Apple's devices can be integrated into its current infrastructure more cheaply than paying for a dedicated BlackBerry server, said Joe Klimavicz, chief information officer of the the weather, ocean and fisheries research agency with 13,000 workers.

Halliburton Co., the world's second-largest oilfield- services provider, said last week it will phase out 4,500 BlackBerrys and switch to the iPhone because the Apple device does a better job of supporting internal company applications like software to monitor well construction.

The GSA, which also manages office buildings for more than a million federal employees across the U.S., picks suppliers and negotiates prices for more than 12 million products and services ranging from consulting contracts to office supplies and laboratory equipment.

The Washington-based agency will continue to issue BlackBerrys alongside other devices and allow employees to choose their own device from an approved list, Ruiz said. The agency has no plans to support employees' own devices, a policy adopted by some companies seeking to reduce costs.

Ruiz didn't say how many smartphones the GSA issues to employees or what the breakdown is by type of device.

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