Posted on by Brendan Eich

MWC 2014, Firefox OS Success, and Yet More Web API Evolution

Just over a week ago, I left Barcelona and Mobile World Congress 2014, where Mozilla had a huge third year with Firefox OS.

mwc14-booth

We announced the $25 Firefox OS smartphone with Spreadtrum Communications, targeting retail channels in emerging markets, and attracting operator interest to boot. This is an upgrade for those channels at about the same price as the feature phones selling there today. (Yes, $25 is the target end-user price.)

tarako

We showed the Firefox OS smartphone portfolio growing upward too, with more and higher-end devices from existing and new OEM partners. Peter Bright’s piece for Ars Technica is excellent and has nice pictures of all the new devices.

We also were pleased to relay the good news about official PhoneGap/Cordova support for Firefox OS.

We were above the fold for the third year in a row in Monday’s MWC daily.

(Check out the whole MWC 2014 photo set on MozillaEU’s Flickr.)

As I’ve noted before, our success in attracting partners is due in part to our ability to innovate and standardize the heretofore-missing APIs needed to build fully-capable smartphones and other devices purely from web standards. To uphold tradition, here is another update to my progress reports from last year and from 2012.

First, and not yet a historical curiosity: the still-open tracking bug asking for “New” Web APIs, filed at the dawn of B2G by Andreas Gal.

Next, links for “Really-New” APIs, most making progress in standards bodies:

Yet more APIs, some new enough that they are not ready for standardization:

Finally, the lists of new APIs in Firefox OS 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3:

This is how the web evolves: by implementors championing and testing extensions, with emerging consensus if at all possible, else in a pref-enabled or certified-app sandbox if there’s no better way. We thank colleagues at W3C and elsewhere who are collaborating with us to uplift the Web to include APIs for all the modern mobile device sensors and features. We invite all parties working on similar systems not yet aligned with the emerging standards to join us.

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10 Replies to “MWC 2014, Firefox OS Success, and Yet More Web API Evolution”

  3. Please extend Javascript capabilities to allow built-in type declarations of parameters. To any naysayers, you could always declare type Object if you don’t want a specific type.

  5. Pingback: Firefox OS and the unserved billions of the developing world | TrickIdea

  7. Where do things stand with ES6 / Harmony? I was especially looking forward to proper modules & classes… any chance of those being supported across a few browsers within the next couple years?

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