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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.
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Coming soon – Aldi OS
Obviously to be followed the week after by the Lidl one
Would the windows os smartphones not be the third and Firefox the fourth?
They.have blackberry and now tizen to deal with too.
LOL Microsoft mobile products. That’s a good one. Its already dead in the water along with Nokia who is flogging them. They’ve recently indicated they’re ready to make android phones in the near future and to prevent its total destruction and no amount of cash MS throws at then will make or worth their while.
I don’t see what niche Firefox OS is going to service. Their browser has been hemorrhaging users to Chrome for years, and iOS and Android are mature systems which are meeting most users needs. Another OS is just another headache for developers and users.
I have to agree with Eric here, i think they’ll struggle, android is already more or less free to use, Apple has it’s market. if these guys have a few good ideas they will just be copied by the others. Android became established because they were up against an established closed expensive opposition, they came in with the concept of being free, someone else now has to compete with two established companies the slick apple designs and the open free androids.
What’s the Firefox edge?
While OpenSource is great and all, the reality is constantly full of bugs – FireFox browser is one of the most resource heavy applications you can run
Agreed, the Android SDK feels like it’s being held together with duct tape.
You’re talking crap. If open source is so buggy then linux wouldn’t be powering 70% or more of the worlds servers. I could go on and on with examples of the crap you are talking but I think my first point illustrates it nicely.
Conor, I was referring to FireFox and it’s browser with its countless bugs, not Linux which I am fully aware of
http://m.threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/firefox-18-brings-21-updates-fixes-nearly-3000-bugs-010913
They’re really coming to the market *very* late. When you consider that even the mobile industry giant that is Nokia struggled (and ultimately failed) to get their next generation Maemo / Meego smartphone OS to market and even Windows Mobile 8 isn’t getting all that much traction so far, you’d have to wonder if there’s space for yet another mobile OS ?
To me, it looks like Android is becoming to the mobile/tablet world what Windows is to the desktop world i.e. the de facto OS. It already has 68.4% of the global market!!
Apple’s iOS is occupying a similar (but bigger) space to the Mac OS for laptops/desktops i.e. a very respectable market share of almost 20% of the global market, but a closed Apple-only hardware-software solution that occupies a chunk of the market at the high end. With that kind of chunk of the market, at the top end, and controlling the hardware, software and ecosystem (App Store). That still makes Apple an absolutely hugely profitable, runaway success.
Blackberry’s rather niche and business-focused and fighting to stay relevant while Windows Mobile is still to prove itself as a main stream mobile OS. It may well do this year, but the jury’s still out.
Personally, I just can’t see where Firefox’s Mobile OS would find a foothold in the market! It could be a great OS, but it would still have to sign up handset makers and create a massive ecosystem of developers to build apps before it would be even in the same league as Blackberry and Windows Mobile. Getting into the Google / Apple league would be a rather amazing feat if they ever achieved it!
I don’t think it’s much of a challenge to Google or Apple to be perfectly honest.
There is always a market, especially in one as competitive as the mobile phone market. The problem is you need to offer something unique that sets your product apart. iOS has simplicity, Android has customisation and Blackberry’s OS is marketed as a business solution.
Microsoft didn’t offer anything new to set it apart other than the name. What will this offer? If it does bring something new it will find traction but if it doesn’t it will be dead in the water.
I guess you’re not anybody these days unless you have a mobile operating system.
Its not going to be here 2013. Thus is firmly a third world is for this year. Cheap and cheerful, wil probably be really successful at that
Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows Mobile are the big 4.
Now it seems everyone and their mother are making operating systems for phones: Firefox, Ubuntu, Samsung Tizen. Symbian and bada are still alive somewhere.
More OS’ means more time developers take to make apps for each platform which in turn means slower updates, more bugs and less stable.
Probably means the browser…
Mybe if they went with decent manufacturers they might have a chance but generally ZTE LG and Heuwei don’t make great handsets. This is talking from experience.
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