Firefox OS - Evolving the brand role

Riccardo Leumann

Firefox Operating SystemA brief review of the role of the brand and its transition into the OS world.

Intro - What and Why?

Positioning - About Firefox

Trend 1 - Cloud

Trend 2 - Marketplace

Trend 3 - Humanistic OS

Trend 4 - Media Usage

Trend 5 - Online/Offline

Agenda

In a market dominated by two well established platforms, it becomes very hard for new smartphone operating systems to break into the

market and make an impact.

What and Why?

Firefox has been very successful in providing a new Internet experience through their browser by focusing

on principles over profits and putting people in control of the web experience.

Since the web is growing mostly around mobile access, Firefox decided to take on the challenge of changing the

smartphone experience as well

What and Why?

What and Why?

What we’ll go through in the next pages are some of the key trends and insights that are going on in mobile operating systems,

how they will affect the future of mobile and, most importantly, how Firefox, as a brand, could use

these trends to provide an unique experience and stand out from its competitors.

But first, let’s see what Firefox is all about

Firefox is known for making the web open

About Firefox

It was the first browser to put people on the top spot and make them the priority. It is the only browser developed by a non-profit organization, which allows it to prioritize principles over profits,

resulting only in products that keep individuals in control.

“At Mozilla we are working hard to create this apps platform that is backed entirely by the open Web. It’s not intended to be a “Mozilla

platform” or a “Firefox platform”. The Web is the platform.”

https://marketplace.firefox.com/developers/docs/intro_apps

About Firefox

“The Internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible.”

- The Mozilla Manifesto

About Firefox

Firefox values the sense of community. It brings developers, heavy users and mere web enthusiasts

together for a better experience for all.

About Firefox

“Webmaker is all about building a new generation of digital creators and webmakers, giving people the tools and skills they need to move from using the

web to actively making the web.”

“Individuals must have the ability to shape their own experiences on the Internet.”

- The Mozilla Manifesto

http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/

http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/

About Firefox

While most web technologies are developed behind closed doors, Firefox cultivate out in the open for everyone to see.

When competitors consider making something proprietary, it strives to set it free. And they don’t operate this way for the fun of it,

they operate this way because it believes it’s the right thing to do.

About Firefox

Putting in perspective, what is Firefox fighting for?

About Firefox

“Enemies trigger emotions.When viewers are first introduced to Snow White, they may

like her. But when she is threatened by the wicked witch, like turns to love. They feel fearful for Snow White and

angry at the wicked witch.”

About Firefox

“This is an important lesson for brands. Great brands connect with customers at the emotional level.

The contrast between the hero and the enemy helps audiences grasp the hero’s true nature. Only against the backdrop of darkness do we come

to appreciate the qualities of light.”

http://brandscapes.com/branding/brand-strategy-does-your-brand-have-an-enemy-it-needs-one/

- Roger GrantPresident and Chief Brand Strategist

of Identicor Marketing Inc.

About Firefox

Firefox fights to “build user sovereignty into the fabric of the Internet.”

That means that you are in the hot seat with regard to how much information you share and with who. User sovereignty literally means

that the consumer is king and should never beholden to any other user or corporation on the web.

About Firefox

The enemy in this case would be the corporations that have access to and manipulation of

private information that mobile users are vulnerable to by using those platforms

About Firefox

In the Mozilla worldview, the only person that should know about your web access is you.

Instead of sharing widgets that plague every site on the web, Mozilla makes sharing an integral part of its UI. It fights to prevent

numerous intermediaries from tracking and selling your data.

About Firefox

About Firefox

“Seven years ago when you chose Firefox 1.0 over Internet Explorer, you were making a statement and embracing the open source movement. Next year, if you choose Firefox, you might experience the web in

a very different way from its competitors.”

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/102283-firefox-is-the-clouds-biggest-enemy

- Sebastian AnthonyExtremeTech.com

Now that we know what Firefox stands for, let’s take a look at some upcoming trends that can directly influence the new

Firefox Operating System. We will see trends in technology, social interaction, buying habits and smartphone usage.

About Firefox

Trend

#1

#1The growth of cloud services are allowing smartphones to do more.

Instead of storing data in their hardwares, smartphones have access to all their data through the cloud services, allowing more applications to be processed at the same time and faster. That means this information

can be accessed by multiple devices, but that also means that their private information is stored somewhere else that is not on their phones.

The growth of the cloud service

#1“The cloud has been widely used by mobile users and most of the

cloud services are presented as Web sites and accessed by the browser running on the mobile browsers. More and more cloud

services have been provided through web applications, which are installed from an application store and run like

native applications on the mobile client. Either with a browser or standalone web application, the following areas

should be considered in mobile OS design.”

- Intel, on mobile OS architecture

http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/mobile-os-architecture-trends

#1“At the recent TechEd North America there was a big drive towards Cloud OS and People-Centric IT – essentially, the

idea of simplifying how users access their applications and data on many platforms and devices.”

- Tom CarterTechNetUK

http://blogs.technet.com/b/uktechnet/archive/2013/06/13/going-beyond-windows-8-what-does-the-future-of-operating-systems-look-like.aspx

#1“IamOrganized keeps both local and cloud-based files in one

convenient, easily searchable location that may be accessed and searched across a variety of devices. Plus, it looks pretty. If this

does come to fruition, it would likely emerge as a strong challeng-er to Google Drive and boost iCloud’s visibility. There’s also talk

that Apple will make iCloud friendly and more useful to third par-ty apps with many behind the scenes tweaks made in response to

developer complaints.”

- DigitalTrends.com

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/mac-os-x-10-9-what-can-we-expect-from-apples-next-os/#ixzz2YfqGaGmw

Apple to implemente cloud and local files all in one place:

The Firefox OS is different from current platforms.It connects web-based applications to the underlying hardware.

That means that Firefox OS puts the control of the user data in the hands of the user, who gets to decide where this personal information

goes. They have the power over their personal data and no corporations can have access to it.

Why it is relevant to Firefox

Trend

#2

#2What makes the dominant operating systems so successful nowadays

is its wide variety of applications available. But the success of appmarketplaces like that is due to developers and their community.

These platforms make it as easy as possible for apps to be added to the marketplaces and reward the developers.

The success of an OS is due todevelopers

#2“By establishing open software platforms that allow

third-party developers to create applications and distribute them over the platforms’ built-in marketplaces, Google and Apple both

managed to create prospering ecosystems around their smartphone operating systems.

The availability of a comprehensive set of “apps”, or more generally speaking complementary software

applications, has become one of the key success factor for smartphone software platforms.

- Institute for Information Systems and New Media Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munichm

http://www.user.tu-berlin.de/komm/CD/paper/090322.pdf

#2“A positive example of integrating both sides (app developing and distribution) was given by Apple. The platform provider

simultaneously announced that the approval process for application will become more transparent (a facet of the

distribution channel’s openness) and that the policies concerning the use of third-party development tools will be relaxed (a facet

of the platform’s technical openness).”

http://www.user.tu-berlin.de/komm/CD/paper/090322.pdf

- Institute for Information Systems and New Media Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munichm

#2“Along with Internet development, especially after Web 2.0, there

is abundant information in the network waiting to be searched, organized, mined, and brought to users. People are increasingly

living with the Web instead of just browsing it. More and more people are involved in the development,

including information contribution, application development, and social interactions. The mobile operating systems can-

not be self-contained, but have to be open systems.”



#2“Much of the current top mobile operating systems (Apple,

Android, Windows) have a documented software development kit (SDK) with well-defined APIs that enable the common developers to develop applications for these systems. They also have online application stores for the developers

to publish and for the users to download applications.”



In the end, who is really investing in your OS are the developers, they are what makes an OS attractive to the public eyes. Since the sense of

community between developers and users at Firefox is one of its core beliefs, it is essential for Mozilla to embrace these people as much as

possible and help shape the Web experience together.


Trend

#3

#3The operating systems’ user interface are changing, towards a more

native and humanistic approach. These platforms are starting to realize that the UI should be much more focused on the human interaction of

the person with the phone rather than its’ processing capabilities.

A native OS is essential

#3“We just completely ran out of green felt, and wood as well.

This has got to be good for the environment,” joked Craig Fed-erighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, when

introducing a less cluttered redesign of Apple’s Game Center, in a clear dig to the past efforts at aping realism. “In many ways, we’ve tried to create an interface that is unobtrusive

and deferential,” Ive said, where the design “recedes” in order to elevate content on the screen.”

- Rachel Metz,TechnologyReview.com

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/515736/apples-new-mobile-os-is-all-about-ive

Apple’s iOS approaches a “more humanistic” way to user experience:

#3“In a recent performance measurement with a few market Android devices, we found there was a device X behaving uniformly worse than another device Y with common benchmarks in graphics, media, and browsing. But the user perceivable experience with the device X was better than device Y. The root reason we identi-fied was that traditional benchmarks or benchmarks designed in traditional ways did not really characterize user interac-

tions, but measured the computing capability”



Users prefer user interaction rather than traditional benchmarks:

#3“Traditional benchmarks only measure video playback perfor-

mance with some metrics like FPS, or frame drop rate. This meth-odology has at least two problems in evaluating UE. The first

problem is that video playback is only part of the user interactions in playing video. A typical life cycle of user interac-

tion usually includes at least the following links: “launch player” > “start playing” > “seek progress” > “video playback” > “back to home screen.”

Yet good performance in video playback cannot characterize the real user experience in playing video. User interaction evaluation

is a superset of traditional performance evaluation..”



Example:

#3“Android is pretty much a confusing mess, and if you are looking for something that is

more intuitive, Windows is there for you. And the iPhone is kind of boring now.”

- Terry Myers, Windows Phone user

http://www.mobileworldlive.com/microsoft-talks-up-windows-phone-success

#3“Smartphones showed a much higher level of researching versus

buying online. While 52 percent of consumers would shop online for a smartphone, just 23% could see themselves buying one online.

This finding represents a critical opportunity for brick-and-mortar retailers. One of the largest CE categories (smartphones) reveal

significant consumer reluctance to being purchased online”

- The NPD Group, Inc

https://www.npd.com/lps/pdf/CE_e-Commerce_Final_Report.pdf

Smartphones are highly being researched online, but not purchased.

Firefox is the best

Users want to feel as if they had the phone for years, yet they want something new and innovative.

Customers still do a lot of research online, but the final purchase decision of new smartphones is still made at the store. Customers want

to try the phone before they buy it. They want to feel the weight,explore the phone’s interface and see how comfortable they get with it

in a short time at the store.


Trend

#4

#4Communication between phones nowadays goes much further than

voice and text. In fact, these two primary communication mediums are starting to get less relevant. Smartphone

users are finding new ways to connect with one another. It can be through social media applications or media exchange, but users are starting to explore new ways of communicating with their

friends.

Communicating with different medias

#4

http://www.slideshare.net/kleinerperkins/kpcb-internet-trends-2013

Snapchat allows you to share content for a short term:

#4


The rise of sound andsound sharing:

#4


Photo, video, audio and data sharing to grow even more:

People nowadays want more than a phone that can text and call. Instagram and Snapchat changed the way we share media, Twitter for information and Facebook for how we stay in touch with our friends.

These mediums are becoming more and more part of how we interact with one another. Windows is losing customers because it doesn’t have Instagram or any Google apps now. For an OS to be successful in this

market it has to provide basic media-sharing capabilities.


Trend

#5

#5New digital tools are bringing people together online

to bring them closer offline. New users value that they can connect with other people, but are starting to appreciate

more and more the face-to-face contact.

Online to Offline

#5

http://www.slideshare.net/mobileyouth/mobileyouth-what-is-the-social-customer

#5

http://www.slideshare.net/mobileyouth/mobileyouth-what-is-the-social-customer

#5“This trend involves using digital tools to create face-to-face, real world interactions. It’s the combination of social (trust), local and mobile. Botsman* used the example of service networking – using our online relationships to get things done in the real world. This

can be seen with websites like Airtasker, where users post errands they need done and pay ‘runners’ to complete them.

As the line between the online and offline becomes increasingly blurred, the challenge for marketers is to leverage the idea of ‘in

the moment’.”

- Haylie Pretorius,Business2Community.com

http://www.business2community.com/digital-marketing/new-frontiers-in-digital-market-ing-the-convergence-of-technology-business-and-brands-0523359

* Rachel Botsman, Social Innovator

People value the offline interaction much more than online. They realize that relationships in the real world are much deeper and

meaningful. They know the capabilities of social media for maintaining connections, but there is no interaction like the real world.

The Firefox OS brand should not only be associated with the idea of bringing people together online, but it should be a brand

that allows that to happen in the offline world as well.


Suggestions, comments or feedback?Contact me: [email protected]

Riccardo LeumannRiccardoLeumann.comCreative branding and strategy

Date post:	12-May-2015
Category:	Marketing
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