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  • Mozilla Planning to Launch Lower Cost Smartphone in Emerging Markets

    Mozilla has recently announced its plan to associate with smart phone manufacturers and launch new products priced under the $50 mark for the emerging markets.

    Primarily Mozilla is targeting this market because it offers a lot of revenue potential and with 60% of all cell phone consumers being smartphone users, Mozilla expects to see a high level of acceptability in this market, especially because it’s one that has been ignored for some time by high end Android smartphone manufacturers. The projected Firefox operating system for these low-cost mobile phone devices will offer an alternative to the higher priced android or iOS systems.

    Mozilla’s senior vice president, Li Gong believes there are huge opportunities in emerging markets where consumers want smart phones at affordable prices. Mr. Gong goes on to say that his company plans on procuring a 10% market share of the smartphone industry, although he didn't say when this would happen.

    These under $50 priced phones would be ideal for emerging markets like China, India, Latin America and other countries. Several smartphone manufacturers are excited about the project and have already started manufacturing the devices.

    Mozilla, currently in the testing phases of the new Firefox OS system, says there are 18 major telecommunications organizations supporting this new OS. Mr. Gong goes on to say that this new mobile software is lighter, and uses less memory compared to the Google android or Apple iOS, yet offers the same performance. Mozilla expects to launch it’s first Firefox OS powered devices sometime this year in Brazil through the Telefonicas, commercial brand, Vivo.

    Google, in an effort to stay on top of its game, is considering this option as well, and may plan on launching their own low cost mobile devices powered on the chrome mobile operating system.

  • Mobile World Congress 2013: The End of Apple Dominance Is Near

    The annual meeting Mobile World Congress, ongoing this week in Barcelona, seems to mark more than any other event the end of Apple dominance in the global market for smartphones and tablets and the rise of some rivals with more open operating systems.

    Mozilla has opened the event in Barcelona unofficially. The nonprofit organization, which used Firefox a decade ago to fight Microsoft control in the online search engine market, wants to change totally the smartphone market as well.

    The industry is currently unnaturally controlled by a few companies, said general manager of Mozilla, Gary Kovacs, during the presentation of the first generation of mobile devices with Firefox operating system.

    More than 20 telecom industry executives who brought their support to the launch of Firefox OS had similar views.

    “We change the industry for the common good,” said Cesar Alienta, general manager of Telefonica, one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world. Spanish company chief criticized the closed operating systems, such as iOS, and warned that “the smartphone market is making a step back from the internet’s opening feature”. Telefonica wants to introduce shortly Firefox OS devices in Spain, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela.

    America Movil, controlled by Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world, committed to launch Firefox OS in Mexico “and in all possible markets” soon.

    The outgoing General Director of Deutsche Telekom, Rene Obermann, called the Firefox OS release “an important step towards more competition between different systems”. Deutsche Telekom will launch Firefox OS devices starting from this summer in Poland.

    Mozilla is not the only company that wants to change the market for smartphones and tablets. Samsung and Intel are also developing an operating system called Tizen, which would be even more open and will allow software developers more important changes compared to Apple's iOS and Google's Android.

    Mobile operators are strongly attracted by the prospect of being able to strongly change the operating systems, for an interaction as direct as possible with the user.

    The irony in this case is that the success of Samsung with Tizen would make the South Korean company less dependent on Google and stronger in the smartphones and tablets market.

    The rest of the world seems to recover the distance to Apple's platform for mobile devices, and the American company must innovate again or will be cannibalized by rivals with cheaper and more accessible devices. Smartphone market seems to have matured, so that real opportunities could be in the expansion in emerging markets.

  • Mozilla Presents The First Firefox OS Smartphones

    Mozilla Foundation announced its first handsets powered by Firefox OS. Named Keon and Peak, the new mobile devices are developed by Telefonica and Geeksphone and are designed for developers interested in the platform.

    The first terminal, Keon, does not have too impressive specifications, but Mozilla Foundation’s ambitions also aims to emerging markets, where the price is a critical issue.

    Keon offers a 3.5-inch display with HVGA resolution, a Qualcomm Snapdragon S1 processor clocked at 1 GHz, RAM memory with a capacity of 512 MB and 4 GB internal storage which can be expanded with a MicroSD card. The first Firefox OS handset offers a 2G tri-band modem and 3G quad-band plus 802.11n wireless connectivity. The features list also includes a 3-megapixel camera, a battery with a capacity of 1580 mAh, GPS and accelerometer.

    With this terminal, Telefonica and Geeksphone have developed a second model, more impressive in terms of hardware, but the fact that Mozilla did not mention this product makes us think that this one might be launched later.

    Peak will offer a 4.3-inch screen, IPS panel and qHD resolution, while the hardware platform will be a much more powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 chip, clocked at 1.2 GHz. Connectivity and storage facilities are the same, but Peak’s camera will have a 8-megapixel sensor and a 2-megapixle front partner, the battery also making a jump to 1800 mAh.

    Unfortunately, Mozilla Foundation has not communicated the price of these terminals, but they will be launched the next month.

  • Firefox Goes Mobile

    Mozilla announced that Firefox is now available for Nokia’s Maemo platform. The browser is intended and optimized for use on the Nokia N900. It can also be run on the Nokia N810 and N800 Internet Tablets, but Mozilla don’t recommend using its product on these devices because they are "significantly less powerful.”

    Firefox for Maemo is built on the same engine as Firefox 3.6 for desktop (Gecko 1.9.2) with some extensive under the hood work to optimize for mobile. It includes the new “TraceMonkey” JavaScript engine, an advanced JIT (“just in time”) compiler using tracing technology.

    New Mozilla’s mobile browser comes with Weave Sync that enables to sync tabs, history, bookmarks and passwords with desktop Firefox, Location-Aware Browsing, which gives you maps and information relevant to your location, offline browsing and one-touch bookmarking.

    It’s the first mobile browser with add-ons support. There are currently more than 40 Firefox add-ons available for mobile, like popular AdBlock Plus, URL Fixer, TwitterBar, language translators, and geo guides, to name a few.

    Initially, Firefox for N900 does not support browser plug-ins. “Due to performance problems using Adobe Flash within Firefox on many websites, especially those with multiple plug-ins on them, we have disabled plugins for Firefox for Maemo 1.0.,” states Mozilla.

    “We plan to provide a browser add-on that will enable you to selectively enable plugins on certain sites, because some sites, like YouTube, work well.”

    Mozilla is also working on a mobile version of its browser for other platforms. Firefox for the Windows Mobile is in Alpha (yet optimized for Samsung Omnia II, AT&T Touch Fuze, HTC Touch Pro), the company is currently investigating development for Android.

    They do not have plans to build Firefox for iPhone – due to “constraints with the OS environment and distribution”, Blackberry – due to “its Java-based operating system and the inability to build native components”, and Symbian.

    Related articles
    Nokia Unveils N900 – The New Company’s Flagship Handset
    Mobile Firefox Expected On HTC Touch Pro

  • Innovation Come to BlackBerry as RIM Acquires Torch Mobile

    There’s no doubt that the mobile market is a hot market. Competition is stiff, but the so far the clear winner by leaps and bounds has been the Apple iPhone.

    The market for second is easily becoming close with Blackberry fighting to keep its position and Palm looking to break into the market but eating some of Blackberry’s market share with the Palm Pre.

    Still, the iPhone may not stay on top forever and Blackberry has taken a bold step in the right direction. If one thing has kept the iPhone ahead of the game, it’s been its clear dominance in the ease of use market.

    Blackberry has always had dependable technology and has also established itself amongst the corporate market, something iPhone has been unable to do in recent years. As Blackberry users look for innovation, Research in Motion (RIM) take a bold step in redefining their browser by acquiring browser development company, Torch.

    The Toronto based developer has created an open-source browser called Iris, which like Mozilla, has offered innovative design for mobile browsers, to include tabbed interface. This tabbed interface has worked well for the various mobile devices that Iris has been put on, and now with the ability to be included on Blackberry devices, the acquisition could prove beneficial for both parties.

    In what is sure to be a step forward in tackling Apple, RIM released a statement stating that Torch will work closely with RIM developers to “contribute to the ongoing enhancement of the BlackBerry platform.”

    Torch has gone further to state on their own website that any contributors, Committers and Reviewers will remain on board as active participants in the WebKit development community.

    It remains to be seen if Blackberry can truly take on the overwhelming lead that Apple has with their iPhone, but with unique innovation that Torch can bring to the table, RIM has the ability to increase the ease of use to all their devices.