BARCELONA—At last year's Mobile World Congress, Mozilla launched Firefox OS to compete in a field crowded by Android, iOS, and even Blackberry. Today, the company showed off seven new commercial handsets that will be available around the world, though not in the U.S.
Mozilla also announced plans to start a "flood" of $25 smartphones.
"We are committed to an open platform [that] works across a variety of devices," Mitchell Baker, chair of the Mozilla Foundation, told the crowd of 200 media here at Mobile World Congress today. "It is called the Web."
Alcatel OneTouch, Huawei, LG, and ZTE are all building handsets using Firefox OS. Panasonic has even announced it will use Firefox OS to power a Web-connected HDTV.
Although largely unknown in the U.S., Firefox phones launched in a variety of countries, including Hungary, Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Greece. These markets are being underserved by the major players (think iPhone 5c), and Mozilla sees an opportunity. The U.K.-based research firm Mediacells estimated that consumers in India and China alone will purchase more than 500 million smartphones in 2014, about half of global sales. For more than 400 million of those buyers, it will be their first smartphone ever.
Although nowhere near the top-of-the-line Android and iOS devices, Firefox phones are getting better, with Alcatel and ZTE announced multiple dual-core handsets at the show.
The ZTE Open II has dual-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 480-by-320 display, and 2-megapixel camera, while the ZTE Open C (pictured above) comes with a Snapdragon 200 processor, an 800-by-480 display, and a 3-megapixel camera. Alcatel is also offering three different OneTouch models, all with dual-core processors: the Alcatel One Touch Fire S, Fire E, and Fire C. The Fire is the top-of-the-line device with 4G LTE, a 4.5-inch screen and an 8-megapixel camera.
Firefox also announced a new reference handset (above, right) that it will make available to developers worldwide, the Firefox OS Flame. It runs a dual-core Qualcomm MSM8210 Snapdragon CPU, has a 4.5-inch screen, runs quad band with 8GB of memory. Although it ships with 1GB of RAM, developers will be able to simulate lower memory configurations to tests their performance. It supports Wi-Fi, 802.11 b/g/n, and Bluetooth.
"What we are all about is bringing more people online," said Mozilla COO Jay Sullivan. To that end, the company is partnering with Shanghai-based Spreadtrum to design and build a device that costs just $25 and deliver them to OEMs across the world. Sullivan predicted that "the efficiency of Spreadtrum will create a flood of $25 smartphones."