Firefox CEO on the Future of the Mobile Web

This week at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, Gary Kovacs, the CEO of Mozilla made a bold announcement about how its Firefox operating system will be pushing further into the mobile fray with new phone makers picking it up.

He had the following to say about where he sees mobile heading (via Tiernan Ray at Barron’s Tech Trader):

Mozilla’s Kovacs made a vigorous attempt to paint the Apple and Google duopoly as being the obstacle to the future of the mobile industry, without so much as naming either company.

“Are some people sitting in a couple of buildings going to decide the content for four billion people?” he asked.

Kovacs talked up how 800 members of the press came to the organization’s press conference the other day. “What was clear to me was the hunger for the open Internet.” He says the mission is to bring the Internet to mobile, “the true Internet, not the Internet as someone imagines it.” Kovacs talks about calling his 10-year-old daughter, having a chat about JavaScript, LTE, etc. she was bored and just wanted to talk about a painting she’d just finished. The lesson is that “it’s all really about people” says Kovacs. He notes that the Web has over 240 million unique Web sites. “That’s content we want, that’s content that is locally relevant.”

“It took twenty-years for the first two billion people to connect to the Internet. If we think that’s fast, the next two billion are going to connect in only five years. And the next two billion, the services they expect, are impossible for me or a couple of people in Slicon Valley to conceive of. Is a farmer in the Indian countryside going to have the same need as a lawyer in New York? I find it impossible to conceive of how five or six billion are going to get what they need from one or two companies, no matter how delicious they are.”

Stephen Elop, CEO of Nokia, was also on the panel – head over below for his thoughts as well.

Source:

Nokia CEO Elop: Next Billion People Need Apps, 39-Day Standby Time (Barron’s)