WhatsApp was the big missing app for Firefox OS. In Mozilla's target markets, WhatsApp was huge but the company didn't want to invest any engineering resources to support Firefox OS, understandably. Firefox OS was an unproven OS with no market share and no J2ME support.
In response, Mozilla Research started a "j2me.js" project to try running the WhatsApp J2ME app in JavaScript, sharing some code with the Shumway project to run Flash content. If that worked well enough, maybe WhatsApp would become interested. It did actually kinda work, but the project did not proceed for a number of reasons. Also, j2me.js was renamed "PluotSorbet", due to trademark concerns:
WhatsApp was the only reason I didn't buy a Firefox OS phone here in Brazil.
You need to have WhatsApp to get laid.
Wait... WhatsApp has a J2ME app? Like... a Midlet? From the 90s? For real?
I read somewhere that supporting "ancient" mobiles via j2me was the reason WhatsApp got the advantage over other chat apps. Yes, they (did) put a lot of effort in supporting j2me phones.
EDIT: found source: http://blog.textit.in/your-path-to-a-$16b-exit-build-a-j2me-...
It certainly did have http://blog.textit.in/your-path-to-a-$16b-exit-build-a-j2me-...
Not from the 90s, on many countries feature phones are still a thing, and they do run J2ME.
As best i understand, Whatsapp's support for anything but iOS is "poor" to put it nicely.
bubble-vision. Whatsapp was pretty much messaging standard in South America, non-UK Europe, Russia and non-China SE Asia and I bet those were not majority iOS markets then nor now.
You mean iPhone, because there's no iPad version at all.
Actually, WhatsApp runs on Symbian and Series 40. Many, possibly most, people who use WhatsApp run it on devices that arguably aren't even smartphones.
Works really well on my Android.
Same here!
Mea culpa, got it confused with a certain other messaging app...
Yeah. I live in South Korea, which is dominated by a local instant messenging platform, KakaoTalk. Anyone who cares to be social is on KakaoTalk. Text, photo, video, files, appointments, notifications, polls, payments, booking a hairdresser ... the list of things that are done through Kakao is long. A phone without a KakaoTalk client is useless.
I guess his response would be that the web-based approach changes the pitch from "make a version of KakaoTalk for our mobile OS" to "make a web version of KakaoTalk, which also runs on our mobile OS" along with "and you don't even need to talk to us for deployment".
Re:The Story of Firefox OS
by openfuture on Friday March 03, 2017 @08:11PM
(#13788488)
This has been the story of linux since day 0
Obviously there are technical workarounds that you can attempt but consumers are wary of "knock off" products. So there is a vicious cycle in which people won't produce the content that you need to get users until you already have users. Possibly one can break this by supporting Android apps, but you would have to make the experience as good as an actual android device, which seems both demanding and limiting (because of cross-app interactions via e.g. intents).