LOW-END handsets, or subsidised tracking devices, used to be an area dominated by Nokia and a few other players. Firefox is finally coming out with a $25 phone running Linux [1], as demonstrated at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week. Mozilla has lots of competition in this area (some of it was mentioned in [2,3]), so it will depend a lot on developers, whom it is trying to entice with tools [4,5] (Canonical does the same) and hacker-friendly phones [6]. Mozilla just needs to be careful not to alienate developers by making Firefox an advertisers' platform, seeking revenue/subsidies through unwanted brainwashing. ⬆
At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Mozilla announced the first formal reference smartphone for its Linux-based Firefox OS — the self-branded Firefox OS Flame phone — as well as the first developer tablets. The latter comprise an already tipped 7-inch Via “Vixen” tablet, and a 10-inch “InFocus” tablet from Foxconn.
Mozilla, which makes Firefox OS for budget smartphones, announced seven new devices that will ship to emerging markets in 2014. Alcatel is building the Fire C, Fire E and Fire S along with a Fire 7 tablet. Huawei will be releasing the Y300 while ZTE has two new devices in the Open II and Open C. In addition, Mozilla announced the Firefox OS Flame, a reference phone for developers to tune their HTML5 Web apps to Mozilla’s range of devices.
In an impressive first-year achievement, Firefox OS has found a toehold in a fiercely competitive smartphone market. The next challenge for Mozilla's browser-based mobile operating system will be to convert that toehold into a foothold.
Mozilla announced PhoneGap support for Firefox OS, as well as new App Manager tools, and tipped upcoming features including LTE and NFC support.
In addition to announcing three Firefox OS hardware reference platforms, including the Firefox OS Flame (shown below) and seven new commercial phones and tablets from ZTE and Alcatel, Mozilla unveiled several new Firefox OS developer tools. The open source company also offered a preview of upcoming features in its fast-growing Linux- and HTML5-based mobile OS.
As you may know, the Mozilla developers are attending the Mobile World Congress 2014, which takes place at Barcelona, in 24-27 February.
As you may know, Geeksphone Revolution is a smartphone with mid-end hardware specs, that allows the users install either Android or Firefox OS, via the built-in recovery tool, which comes pre-installed on the phone.