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A comment on Mozilla to open first-world front in Firefox OS war. Parent comment

Re:Mozilla to open first-world front in Firefox OS war by jbigelow76 on Sunday March 01, 2015 @05:12PM (#9129121)
I'd like to see a critical mass of AOSP vendors emerge that would convince Android devs to look beyond the Play store. MS shipping their own flavor of Android, along with Amazon and then BB and Jolla offering Android app compatibility could begin to turn that tide. Especially with MS being able to offer some "foundational" type apps (Bing maps, email client, MS Office, Cortana) that could address some of the holes in not utilizing Google Play services.

I don't see it happening though, MS would have to declare that their unified Windows 10 OS is a failure before it even launches.

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Re:Mozilla to open first-world front in Firefox OS war by mkr-hn on Sunday March 01, 2015 @05:34PM (#9129203)
Amazon is already working on the services. My Kindle Fire got a maps app (powered by Nokia Here) in one of the newer updates.
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Re:Mozilla to open first-world front in Firefox OS war by jbigelow76 on Sunday March 01, 2015 @07:23PM (#9129592)
It's not just the lack of apps (but any Windows Phone user will tell you that it's a huge drag) but that the ROI of offering an Android app outside of Google Play isn't there.

If it weren't just Amazon's AOSP, but also (for instance) if Microsoft and Firefox also offered their own, and combined they took a respectable share of the Android install base AND their respective app stores could all be targeted by Android devs with a single deployment then we would have something.

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Re:Mozilla to open first-world front in Firefox OS war by SwellJoe on Sunday March 01, 2015 @07:19PM (#9129575)
I have a Fire Phone with the Amazon maps app. I find it extremely disappointing after coming from Google Maps. No bike routes and quite clumsy UI. And, unfortunately, even though I've sideloaded the Play Store and installed Google Maps, the text is mangled beyond legibility, so I get lost a lot more often now.
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Re:Mozilla to open first-world front in Firefox OS war by tracker1 on Monday March 02, 2015 @01:12AM (#9130547)
Funny, after early today having to enter "Hospital" then "Emergency Room" into maps while in down town Phoenix, I found the whole experience pretty disappointing... Google should really work on that kind of entry.
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