Hasta La Gadget!

We got our hand son the final version of the Firefox OS. Today it’s about low-cost smartphones, but tomorrow will be different.

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Back in February at the Mobile World Congress tradeshow a plethora of carriers pledged their support for Mozilla’s HTML-5 open web mobile platform, Firefox OS, which is hoping to shake up the low-end smartphone segment. Today, the launch date of the first commercial Firefox OS phone has been confirmed: the ZTE Open will go on sale tomorrow in Spain, on Telefonica’s Movistar network.

The handset will cost €69 (around $90), which includes a pre-pay balance of €30 for prepaid customers plus a 4GB microSD card. The carrier is also offering an option of zero interest financing for post-paid customers. IHS Screen Digest analyst Ian Fogg described the pricing as “very compelling, commenting on the launch via Twitter: “Featurephones are dead, finally… Now there’s no price reason not to own a smartphone.”

Telefonica said it also plans to offer the handset in additional markets “ in the coming weeks” – name-checking Colombia and Venezuela. When it announced  support for Firefox OS back in February it said its first Firefox-powered phones would be sold in Latin America and Spain. In the event, Spain gets first dibs. Also today, Telefonica confirmed the ZTE Open will be the first of “a number of Firefox OS devices” it will launch this year — “across a range of different price points”. Which suggests it’s also hoping to challenge Android’s expansive mid-tier, although this first handset sits firmly in the low end segment.

Commenting on the launch in a statement, Luis Miguel Gilpérez, CEO of Telefónica España, said: “We believe that smartphones need to be more open and that the web is the platform for making this possible. Consumers should not be locked to any one system but have the choice to consume the content they want and the flexibility to be able to take it with them when they change devices. This first open web device marks a significant milestone in making this possible. This is just the beginning as we plan to bring a wide range of Firefox OS devices to our customers.”

This is not the only diversification effort Telefonica has made in the smartphone space in recent times. Just last week it announced a joint marketing effort with Microsoft to push the Windows Phone 8 platform in a bid to dilute the power of Android and iOS. Firefox OS can be seen as another branch of the same strategy, as carriers seek ways to erode the dominance Google especially has established in smartphones. Figures out today from Kantar peg Android’s smartphone share in five European markets at 70%, for instance.

Too much power concentrated in the hands of a single company weakens the position of carriers — giving them an incentive to push alternatives. Unlike Android, Firefox OS’s openness offers them a vehicle for adding and promoting their own services without having to put more power in the hands of Google.

Specs wise, the ZTE Open is a low end affair, with a 3.5-inch, HVGA TFT touchscreen display, 256MB of RAM and 512MB of ROM combined with a 3.2MP camera. Location-based services are provided by Nokia’s HERE maps. Firefox OS can run HTML 5 apps — with optimized versions of Facebook and Twitter available, along with the likes of Pulse, Airbnb and Soundcloud to name a few. Additional local apps can be sourced via the Firefox Marketplace.

The ZTE Open is not the first phone running Firefox OS to go on sale. Spanish developer phone startup, Geeksphone, put out two developer handsets running the OS back in April, selling out of its stock within hours. But this is the first commercial device launch of a device running the Firefox OS.

Mozilla said Deutsche Telekom is also preparing to launch a Firefox OS devices, in the first wave of launches along with Telefonica. The other handset touted to be landing in this launch phase is the Alcatel One Touch Fire. The OS currently has more than 20 hardware and operator backers globally. Mozilla added that carrier Telenor will launch their first Firefox OS phones in Central and Eastern Europe this year.

When Mozilla said devices running Firefox OS would be cheap, we didn’t know they’d be this cheap. Telefónica has just tweeted that the ZTE Open will be launching in Spain tomorrow for €69, which translates to around $90 and is a good $30 less than the cheapest developer unit we’d seen until now. And here’s where it gets pretty wild: that price includes €30 ($39) of airtime for prepaid customers. When we played with the Open back in February at Mobile World Congress, we weren’t exactly blown away by it, but we’re arguably not the target demographic. The real question is whether Spaniards will be willing to sacrifice access to Google’s services and ecosystem with devices like the Vodafone Smart Mini now selling for as little as €49 ($65).

Filed under: Cellphones

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Source: Telefonica Digital

It was not too long ago when we talked about how ZTE’s Open smartphone managed to pick up the collective nod of approval by the folks over at the FCC, which made the news simply because it is a Firefox […]

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At Computex earlier today, Mozilla and Foxconn have announced a partnership that will see Mozilla’s new Firefox OS be used on several devices that will be manufactured by Foxconn, including a tablet that has already been shown off. It’ll be manufactured for an OEM, but neither Mozilla or Foxconn have revealed who the lucky company is.

Foxconn says that they’re already working on at least five new devices that will run the Firefox OS, but they noted that these devices wouldn’t be limited to just smartphones and tablets, so we could be seeing some desktop or laptop computers running Firefox OS, or even a handful of Smart TVs that will come equipped with Mozilla’s offering.

Details on the mystery tablet were left unsaid, as Foxconn and Mozilla wanted it to be the responsibility of the OEM to reveal specs and details on the new tablet in the future, and all branding on the tablet was covered up, leaving only a blank black slate running Firefox OS, which obviously isn’t much to look at.

Of course, we knew this day was coming about a week ago, although it seems they didn’t unveil a smartphone as the rumor suggested. Still, we get the knowledge that Foxconn is joining the Firefox OS alliance, and since the manufacturer builds devices from a whole host of different companies, we should see many OEMs come forward with their own Firefox OS treats.

We got our hands on with Firefox OS at Mobile World Congress back in February, and a handful of smartphone manufacturers have announced plans to release Firefox OS devices, including ZTE and Alcatel. However, the bigger companies aren’t into the idea so much, including Samsung, which has no plans to launch a Firefox OS device.

SOURCE: Mozilla Blog

Mozilla and Foxconn team up to offer Firefox OS devices is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
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