Browser developer Mozilla Foundation is reportedly developing a mobile phone platform that will compete with Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, and Microsoft’s Windows Phone Mobile.
According to a Reuters report, the platform has already secured the backing of Chinese handset makers ZTE and HCL, with the first products on Qualcomm processors expected to hit the market in early 2013. More importantly, the platform has also garnered the support of some major operators, including Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telenor, Etisalet, and Smart.
Like Mozilla’s Firefox, the new phone platform will be based on open web standards. Initial details say the FireFox mobile OS will be based on Mozilla’s “Boot to Gecko” project, a layout engine based entirely on open Web standards such as HTML5, which allows it not only to tap into a large ecosystem of developers, but opens up the platform to new features, such as hardware acceleration, which brings it inline with Qualcomm’s stated strategy to optimise chips for web services like graphics rendering and JavaScript.
Telefonica, who has been working with Mozilla on Firefox smartphone platform, predicts that the new devices will be significantly cheaper than today’s smartphones. Retail prices of Firefox smartphones could reach as a low as USD50 without operator subsidies, the operator reportedly said.
Firefox is not the only browser-based platform around. Google has been trying to promote its Chrome browser as an operating system for netbooks for a couple of years now without much success. And then there are those niches platforms that continue to have some market share in the smartphone space, such as Nokia’s waning Symbian OS, Samsung’s Bada, and now the Blackberry OS. All that makes a crowded market place for FireFox to be entering. – www.commsday.com
