AMO:Roadmap/2012
Mozilla is building a Marketplace to bring personalized discovery, worldwide distribution, and easy payments to the largest platform for app development: the Web. Our Marketplace will be imbued with Mozilla's principles of transparency, user control, and open innovation that locked-down platforms lack.
2012 Plans
Deliver a world-class Marketplace that is of the Web and centered on the user.
As apps become a bigger part of our lives, so do the online stores through which we obtain them. For most people, an app store is simply the place you go to find and download apps, but not much more. Just like a supermarket, you want to get in and out as quickly as possible, and probably visit the closest one.
What if your app store was something you actually enjoyed using and participating in: customized to you, interested in your ideas, and a fun place to find the latest, greatest, and niche apps that run across all of your devices?
We're tackling this head on by creating a Marketplace with personality, custom recommendations based on your interests and social graph, easy sharing between all of your devices, and that takes individual privacy very seriously.
By using Persona for identity, our Marketplace gives you access to your favorite apps with a single login, and supports several convenient payment methods for app purchasing to provide frictionless payments across your devices and apps.
Build and promote a developer experience based on openness, respect, and developer freedom.
There's no shortage of app platforms or stores vying for market and mind share, but when it comes to app review policies, direct connections to users, and being transparent, many leave developers disappointed and disillusioned.
We want developers to be engaged and excited, ready to help us prove the Web is the ultimate platform. The Mozilla Marketplace will provide the infrastructure and support for developers to list and sell their apps, but transactions will take place between the user and developer, allowing them to form a direct relationship. Much like a farmer's market, the Mozilla Marketplace will bring buyers and sellers together and create value for both parties. This unique approach gives developers the freedom to make their own decisions around payments, refunds, and support.
Our Marketplace will be run as openly as possible, encouraging our community of developers and users to contribute to our policies and even help us review apps, much like our Firefox Add-ons gallery has done for years.
Continue to advance Firefox customization for add-on users and developers
(coming soon)
Feature Roadmap
Q1 2012
- Consumer features
- Responsive design prototype for desktop, mobile, and tablets
- Purchasing flow prototype, including paid downloads and in-app purchases
- App details page implemented and visually designed
- Support for videos
- PersonaID integration
- Developer features
- App submission and management tools
- Developer Program enrollment flow
- Developer launchpad starting point
- Payments setup for PayPal
- In-app purchases support
- Refund management tool
- Statistics and reports for apps
- App review queues and admin tools
- Administration
- Price tiers and payment types established
- Supported countries and currencies established
- Review policies and content guidelines developed
- Add-ons
- Support for native Firefox Android add-ons
- Support Default to Compatible
- Reboot of Reviewers program and launch of incentives
Q2 2012
- Consumer features
- Remaining consumer pages implemented with new visual design (homepage, categories, collections, search)
- Add-ons and apps integrated into single Marketplace and unified visual style
- Integration of social components into the Marketplace for improved discovery
- Personalized recommendations based on downloaded apps
- Content ratings for age-appropriate filtering
- Additional payment providers, including carrier billing
- Easy sharing between devices
- Cross-browser and platform support
- Developer features
- Country/locale content restrictions
- Add-ons
- Completed migration of background themes (Personas) into Marketplace
Q3 2012
- Scheduled and temporary price tier changes
- Vouchers and coupons
- Additional discovery improvements
Q4 2012
- Gifting apps
- Collection-based discounts