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AP Photo/Paul Sakuma
This photo was taken in 2009 at Mozilla HQ in California, when the foundation marked its one billionth download of its browser. Now it's looking to smartphones...
# Tech wars
Firefox smartphone system challenges Android and iOS
The operating system, which was displayed in Spain yesterday, is due here this summer.
MOZILLA FOUNDATION HAS announced that it will launch its widely anticipated Firefox operating system for smartphones in mid 2013. It is seen as a direct challenge to the duopoly of Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.
Mozilla, which campaigns for open development of the online world, showed off the first commercial version of the Firefox OS on the eve of the opening of the world’s biggest mobile fair in Barcelona, Spain yesterday.
Smartphones equipped with Firefox OS look familiar to those on other systems, with an array of apps, or application programmes, to be made available on an online store, and a mapping programme developed by Nokia.
“With the support of our vibrant community and dedicated partners, our goal is to level the playing field and usher in an explosion of content and services that will meet the diverse needs of the next two billion people online,” said Mozilla chief executive Gary Kovacs.
Mozilla, which aims to take third place behind Android and iOS, said it had already lured 17 operators including Sprint, China Unicom, KDDI, Singtel, Telefonica, Telenor and Deutsche Telecom.
Available in northern hemisphere by summer
The foundation said it was working with handset manufacturers South Korea’s LG and China’s TCL and ZTE on Firefox OS-run devices, with China’s Huawei to follow later in the year.
All the smartphones would be run with Qualcomm Snapdragon application processors, which use an architecture licenced by Cambridge, England-based ARM.
They will be available from the northern hemisphere this summer, with the first devices arriving in Brazil, Colombia, Hungary, Mexico, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Spain and Venezuela. Other markets are to be announced soon, Mozilla said.
Google and Apple’s operating systems combined now control more than 90 per cent of the smartphone market.
Google’s Android ran 69 per cent of all handsets sold last year and Apple’s iOS 22 per cent, said a study by independent analytical house Canalys.
