>I think it will join WebOS in a few months.

You're comparing apples to oranges. WebOS was closed source with limited hardware vendors. FireFox OS is open source, open to all hardware vendors.

Good platforms tend to do well in the marketplace because they attract investment from the outside world. Android is beating iOS because it's a better platform for vendors. FireFox OS is not only a better platform for vendors than iOS, it may turn out to be a better platform for devs than both iOS and Android.

One big difference from WebOS is that the company behind FirefoxOS will not likely abandon it within 12 months of kicking it off. 4th or 5th place in the market might represent enough scale to be considered a "success" as far as Mozilla is concerned.

The phones are also being built by multiple large ODM's, and not just one company that's barely staying afloat (Palm) or a company suffering at the time from a horrible CEO (HP)...

Those devices still need to be built. So a 4th or 5th place might not generate enough revenue to pay them.

I'm not a manufacturer, but at a guess, I'd say that 4th/5th place is still plenty of billions of dollars.

That depends on the shareholders.

Which shareholders are you referring to?

From the manufacturing companies.

Even if it the profit is big, it might not be big enough compared with whatever else they might producing instead.

What would you suggest?

The devices need to have a story.

When normal people buy a mobile, many choose a specific model, because:

- how it looks

- certain persons they know the same model

- there is a specific set of apps they want to have

- how the battery holds

- for whatever reason they want to have a contract and have a limited set to choose from, which fall anyway under the previous points

The question is how to bring these persons to buy a FirefoxOS mobile.

Sure a few geeks will buy them, but will it be enough quantity to keep the operators selling them?