I help a lot of middle aged and elderly people who are not all that tech literate, and get asked a lot for recommendations, and I definitely think there is a niche for something between feature phones and smart phones. A lot of people are not interested in putting in the investment of time and money to get up to pace using Android or an iPhone. There's quite a big step to using those devices, for instance in managing data use, or in the way that phone functions recede amongst new smartphone features. With Android as a new user you can even for all intents and purposes lose your dialler, by pressing and holding the icon incorrectly.
iOS isn't interested in meeting that market, because of low cost, and if they did attempt it both Android and iOS might well suffer in trying to alter and dilute their brands and the unity of their interfaces.
It also works quite well as an target market, because a lot of the apps that would be expected are quite simple, and shouldn't be too difficult to create using web technologies - maybe news or magazine apps, cinema or TV listings, weather and so on.
Combine the right interface with a price of £50-£100, a good battery life, and a credible promise over security and privacy, and it definitely seems like an option which could get into the retail stores, and a place in the market of perhaps 2-3%, which is a good place to start.
By some definitions I'm "elderly", but I can read small print, operate tiny buttons on devices, and think abstractly just fine. I do my best, keeping up with technologies is hard, but doubt I'm alone in that respect.
In any case, I'm excited about the Firefox OS not because I'm old but because I'm interested in a technology that holds a lot of open-source promise: lower costs, non-coercive apps, respect for user privacy, among others. The app (and OS) development model encourages transparency (promotes security) and with a "lower bar to admission" invites wider participation among users.
Since I'm pretty familiar with web programming I think it will be great when FOS devices become available in N. America. I think it will attract many people looking for the alternative it offers.
Us elderly folks tend to value simplicity and utility over bells and whistles, after all, by default a senior's life is complicated enough. We're old, we don't have time to waste, we see through a lot of the marketing hype and unnecessary crap. When there's a task to do gimmicks are just a hassle--making a phone call should be simple, sometimes it's all a person is aiming to do.
FWIW my post was awkwardly written, it might have been better to say I help a lot of people who are not all that tech literate and are also middle aged and elderly. I don't mean that people over a certain age are inherently in that category, just that there is a significant market there.
I agree there's a good opportunity for simpler phones that still get some of the benefits of smartphones rather than a 10 year old Nokia.
That said, I don't see much in the article to suggest this is what Mozilla is going after. Yes, some of the devices will be cheap, but there are plenty of cheap Android and Windows phones too.
Even if an OS did target just this market, the problem would still be a lack of apps. They might not be the kind of users who install 10 home screens full of apps, but many of them will be interested in a handful of apps in different categories, so the long-tail marketplace still matters. That's where there's an advantage to an Android phone customised for simple usage, but still with the ability for a user (or their tech-savvy friends/family) to install a wide range of apps if/when they want to.
They do talk about that market to a certain extent in the article, which I was glad to see.
I think on limited apps, it's worth saying that beyond a relatively small number of apps like Facebook or WhatsApp, someone moving from a feature phone won't necessarily have any interest in existing apps on other systems. In general they won't want Google Maps or Waze or Telenav Scout (and won't ask for those while buying the phone), they want to type 'directions' or 'weather' and have something useful come up.
That lowers the barrier to entry, although of course there is still the basic requirement that enough useful apps are there, which imo doesn't yet currently apply on FxOS.
There are other articles that do go into an initiative from Mozilla, Telefónica, Verizon and other phone companies to make flip and slider phones using a version of the OS with a simpler interface.
OT: Do you have any recommendations for elderly users? Any resources would be great, too. I've looked around but it's hard to find current, reliable information on a somewhat unusual topic.
The specs I find myself dealing with are the following, which I think are typical:
* Very little knowledge of mobile computer conventions, or any computer conventions: Icon literacy, swiping, tapping, home screens, etc. Some don't understand what a web host is, or the difference between a browser's search field and its address bar.
* Constrained physical abilities: Vision to see small print, dexterity to swipe correctly, etc.
Man, webOS ruled in this market before the epic journey that was its downfall. I had to drag unwilling family members kicking and screaming to iOS, unable to give a good explanation for why it was missing so many conveniences webOS had.
It would be nice if another OS could be as instantly familiar as it was, as willing to be as simple or as complex as its user asked it to be.
It's funny how even today iOS and Android are just catching up to some of the beauty of webOS. Pieces of it live on in blatant (sometimes poor) rip offs, but even today I still miss it.
From before iOS 5, webOS had pull down menus, wifi quick-select (STILL missing in iOS) card-based interface, card-based background-pause multitasking, backgrounded music player, card-based multitasking switcher with swipe-up to close, and the list continues. If these sound familiar it's because iOS ripped off so many of them.
iOS isn't interested in meeting that market, because of low cost, and if they did attempt it both Android and iOS might well suffer in trying to alter and dilute their brands and the unity of their interfaces.
It also works quite well as an target market, because a lot of the apps that would be expected are quite simple, and shouldn't be too difficult to create using web technologies - maybe news or magazine apps, cinema or TV listings, weather and so on.
Combine the right interface with a price of £50-£100, a good battery life, and a credible promise over security and privacy, and it definitely seems like an option which could get into the retail stores, and a place in the market of perhaps 2-3%, which is a good place to start.