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Firefox Cellphones China Handhelds Mozilla Operating Systems Hardware

Foxconn Betting Big On Firefox OS 94

Posted by timothy from the ok-but-where's-the-ice-weasel-phone? dept.
jfruh writes "Foxconn is firmly identified in the public mind as the company that manufactures iPhones and iPads. But the company is looking to forge its own identity, and sees Firefox OS as the means to do so. To that end, Foxconn is hiring thousands of developers to help work on the open source phone OS and Foxconn's own suite of cloud services."
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Foxconn Betting Big On Firefox OS More

Foxconn Betting Big On Firefox OS

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  • FireFoxconn (Score:5, Funny)

    by Spy Handler ( 822350 ) on Thursday June 20, 2013 @04:08PM (#44064829) Homepage Journal

    I hope they succeed!

    -Sent from my iPhone

    • Re:FireFoxconn (Score:4, Funny)

      by BLToday ( 1777712 ) on Thursday June 20, 2013 @04:20PM (#44064937)

      What if News Corp decided to get into the phone business and have their phone manufacture by Foxconn running Firefox OS with exclusive content from FOX Entertainment ? Would that be FOXFirefoxconn? Or just FXFFX?

    • -Sent from my iPhone

      "Assembled with pride in a sweatshop with suicide nets strung around it." Yup... just what we need associated with open source: Exploitative labor practices.

      • I love this. Find me a place where electronics are manufactured in good conditions.

        not final assembly, but fabrication of chips.

        the guys who made the OpemMoko phone, from England, tried finding English manufactured before making shit in china. No really they did. Couldn't do it.

        No really, I'd love to have a 'made in murrca' device. I really can't get one.

  • I could name a few other mobile OS's (Score:3)

    by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Thursday June 20, 2013 @04:10PM (#44064843) Homepage Journal

    that had (at least on paper) thousands of devs that didn't go anywhere. funded by people like Intel, too.

    actual devices to shops or gtfo.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by KPU ( 118762 )

      actual devices to shops or gtfo.

      That's what Microsoft thought too.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gl4ss ( 559668 )

        actual devices to shops or gtfo.

        That's what Microsoft thought too.

        well just last week I was paid to develope some stuff for windows phone.. so it's not a total loss.

        not that I would buy one for myself but still..

  • where the employees jump out windows.
    Maybe foxconn needs to clean up *that* image first.
    • This is probably one of the best ways of doing that. They'll a face for the workforce that isn't just manual laborers. They can't do lot to reduce the suicide rates because they are more or less in line with national averages. I think I read somewhere the head honcho was also considering opening up US factories, but he was afraid that he would be litigated to death.

  • Firefox OS banned before it's even done (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Firefox OS: made in China.

    Good-bye security and trust.

  • Brand damage (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Aaron B Lingwood ( 1288412 ) on Thursday June 20, 2013 @04:28PM (#44065017)
    Mozilla has such a (well-deserved) squeaky clean image. Considering the slight damage the Foxconn fiasco did to Apple's brand, I pray nothing happens to tarnish Mozilla's good name. Considering this is a partnership, it may prove difficult, if not, impossible to pull out if things start to go wrong. I wish them all the best.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The difference being locking developers in for 16 hour work days is considered perfectly OK.

      • Exactly, just open the door every 24 hours to hose them down, give em some pizza and a carton of T-shirts.

    • Uh... For me, at least, the main problem with Apple is not that it works around the labor laws, but that their devices spy on me (location, sound, video, web browsing) pretty much around the clock. If a Chinese company can deliver a phone running all free software, I'll buy it even if they have to kill a baby panda for each one made. As long as it's within the international law, of course.
  • Because the world really needs another mobile phone operating system.

    • Re:FireFoxConn OS (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20, 2013 @04:40PM (#44065131)

      That is EXACTLY what it needs. I don't want a phone supported by Apple or Google.

      • Re:FireFoxConn OS (Score:5, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20, 2013 @04:51PM (#44065221)

        Introducing the new Slashdot Phone!

        Get hourly updates featuring
        -Vague laws misinterpreted by engineers to be threats to privacy/civil liberties
        -The latest release of every obscure Linux distro and its shortcomings compared to 10 other distros
        -Factually spurious articles about the death of the IT industry.
        -Philosophical flame wars about the validity of alternative energy/electric cars
        -Mental masturbation regarding drones/macs/climate change
        -Hypothetical discussions of Rasberry Pi created by Arduino driven 3-D printers purchased with BitCoins.
        -Windows 8 trolling

        • Introducing the new Slashdot Phone!

          Get hourly updates featuring
          -Vague laws misinterpreted by engineers to be threats to privacy/civil liberties
          -The latest release of every obscure Linux distro and its shortcomings compared to 10 other distros
          -Factually spurious articles about the death of the IT industry.
          -Philosophical flame wars about the validity of alternative energy/electric cars
          -Mental masturbation regarding drones/macs/climate change
          -Hypothetical discussions of Rasberry Pi created by Arduino driven 3-D printers purchased with BitCoins.
          -Windows 8 trolling

          You forgot Version Control Wars [slashdot.org]. 361 comments on that alone (I think I wrote about half of them).

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by bonehead ( 6382 )

            Heh... There was a time when 361 comments on a /. article meant it was a topic nobody was interested in.

        • No Microsoft flamewar. No unicode support. lame

      • Re:FireFoxConn OS (Score:4, Informative)

        by Kozar_The_Malignant ( 738483 ) on Thursday June 20, 2013 @06:38PM (#44065975)
        A quick web search shows that the following mobile phone operating systems are currently being actively used:
        • Android
        • BlackBerry 10
        • iOS
        • Nokia Asha
        • Sailfish OS
        • Windows Phone
        • Windows RT
        • Bada
        • BlackBerry OS
        • Grid OS
        • Linux
        • Mer
        • S40
        • Brew
        • SHR
        • Symbian
        • webOS
        • Tizen

        A number of these are open source. I'm sure you can find something to your liking on that list.

  • How long will Foxconn need Apple? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Thursday June 20, 2013 @04:46PM (#44065181) Homepage

    The day may come when Apple is just the distribution arm of Foxconn. Apple needs Foxconn more than Foxconn needs Apple.

    • Given how, at least as was the opinion of two month's ago, China is taking all trade secrets on a scale that America under King George could not have imagined, perhaps the parallel to China is America, side stepped off a century or so. What does that mean for the relationship between Apple and Foxconn? Your turn. By the way, when the USSR stole American trade secrets down to the blueprints for factories, Russian engineers were not allowed to be creative. They were so stifled it must have made them numb-er
  • It would be great to see Mozilla's name on my machine, I look forward to seeing what they come up with.

  • Redicurous! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So, Firefox OS wirr be rereased in Engrish?
  • With 3000 devs going nuts on this OS, they'll be up to version 21 in a few weeks - oh wait!

  • The Mozilla folks dont seem tohave their head in the game at all on the computer, and frankly I am not sure they ever did. When really basic stuff like this [mozilla.org] goes untouched for well over 10 years while the developers busy themselves adding 'features' no one wants or needs and redesigning the UI over and over again, you have to wonder what is going on. Apparently, what Mozilla really wanted to do all this time is make a toy OS for smart phones so all their 'designers' can keep themselves busy dragging bitmaps

  • From TFA:

    "the company is increasing investments in research, including developing robots for manufacturing. In March, the company said it wanted to hire 5,000 people in Taiwan with skills in hardware, automation, and robotics.

    On Thursday, Foxconn said it was looking to hire between 2,000 and 3,000 people in order to bolster its research into software. It's looking for software engineers with skills in HTML5 operating systems, HTML5 apps, and cloud computing, the company said.

    It intends to design Firefox OS reference models that will cover smartphones, tablets, laptops and TVs.

    Taken together, Foxconn is gearing to build what it hopes will be the next iPhone replacement. After all, why settle for a scrap of the profits when you can have it all?

  • As somebody that has had some contact with the new FFOS SDK, user's might be interested to know it as yet, has no secure storage (think Keychain), where apps can store your passwords. On top of that, apps are written in HTML and Javascript so potentially, malware could scrape your email and passwords from insecure storage if an app stores your username and password for subsequent logins, and, even if the app developer attempts some level of security with encryption keys embedded in the app code, it's JS, wh

  • It was pretty much inevitable that after being taught how to make world class devices by Apple, Foxconn would eventually question why a bunch of foriegners living off in the States should get a cut of their hard work. This means that Apple's big advantages will be:

    1. Hardware patents: How easy it will be for Foxconn to get around these to sell to the US and Europe I'm not sure, since I'm no lawyer. If they have to do their own redesigns or are even completely stymied by overbroad patents they may have a

  • Don't underestimate the impact of how the news of the NSA-Big American Tech orgy is playing out abroad. The Snowden leak has confirmed the most cynical suspicions of most mainland Chinese, and the pressure in that billion+ market for products unstained by NSA influence will become a major tech driver in the near future. In fact, for most people in the world, the only spying they dislike more than being spied on by their own governments is being spied on by the USA. Unless Microsoft, Google, and Apple can pu

  • For chip production agreement between the two companies rumors have been circulating for several years, and this time, we finally see some concrete details. The news comes from Digitimes, TSMC and its integrated service partner GUC (Global UniChip) reportedly will be based on 20nm, 16nm and 10nm process nodes to produce the A-series chips. Reported that TSMC will begin in July this year, 20nm A8 chip limited trial production, and volume production is expected to start in September this year. The so-called A

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