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A comment on Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products. Parent comment

Re:Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on comm... by cmsj on Wednesday August 12, 2020 @06:01AM (#24130231)
It might have had some neat technical designs, but it is not a good idea to try and launch an OS into a maturing market, which the smartphone market clearly was by 2013.

It never works.

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Re:Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on comm... by lenkite on Wednesday August 12, 2020 @08:48AM (#24131497)
It worked in India - it was a success. And it was a shock when Mozilla just gave it up. Giving up on an install base of hundreds of millions just when it was taking off...the US is not the only market you know ?

Sometimes you need to plough your way through the field to get the bountiful harvest - Mozilla did that and then left the harvest to burn.

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Re:Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on comm... by cmsj on Wednesday August 12, 2020 @07:16PM (#24138199)
Firefox made the right call, they were never going to succeed against Android. Looking at statcounter, Kai has not been able to resist it either, dropping from somewhere over 4% to under 1%, while Android sits at over 95%.
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Re:Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on comm... by dageshi on Wednesday August 12, 2020 @09:15AM (#24131725)
Could they make any money off it though?
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Re:Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on comm... by lenkite on Wednesday August 12, 2020 @10:36AM (#24132424)
They could have - they gave up just as it was gaining traction. Now, Reliance Jio earns all the money from it...
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Re:Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on comm... by detaro on Wednesday August 12, 2020 @07:40AM (#24130977)
The FirefoxOS fork KaiOS is now installed on 100M+ devices worldwide - mostly as cheap devices below full smartphones.
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Re:Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on comm... by cmsj on Wednesday August 12, 2020 @07:17PM (#24138206)
1.3 billion Android devices sold last year worldwide.
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Re:Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on comm... by detaro on Thursday August 13, 2020 @09:44AM (#24143239)
So, "significant market share in some markets" for KaiOS, given it has 10% the global numbers and is basically not present in EU and US?

A thing can be good and successful without being the global leader, unless you want monopolies for everything.

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