The Mozilla Foundation partnered with Chinese semiconductor manufacturer Spreadtrum Communications to fulfill its dream of getting a Firefox OS-running smartphone to consumers who cannot afford the premium handsets from brands such as Apple.
A day before the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona goes full blast, Mozilla has announced a deal with Spreadtrum that will bring a $25 entry-level smartphone, running Firefox OS, to emerging markets.
"Firefox OS is off to an amazing start. We launched our first smartphones in July, and have since expanded into fifteen markets. People in Latin America and Eastern Europe have eagerly upgraded from their feature phones to Firefox OS smartphones and now have rich access to the Web and apps. Sales have far exceeded our targets. But 2013 was just the beginning," said Mozilla chief operating officer Jay Sullivan.
"In 2014, we are differentiating our user experience and our partners are growing the portfolio of devices. We are also enabling a whole new category of smartphone, priced around $25, that will bring even more people around the world online," Sullivan added.
The affordable smartphone will use Spreadtrum's SC6821 chipset. The rollout date for the device has not been disclosed yet.
The budget smartphone is simply impossible to compare with the mainstream handsets of today. It is essentially an entry-level phone that can be positioned between the basic text and call phones, and the smartphones that can pretty much be considered pocket computers.
"These solutions expand the global accessibility of open Web smartphones to first-time and entry-level smartphone buyers by reducing the time and cost required for handset makers to bring these devices to market. Spreadtrum and Mozilla have now completed the integration of Firefox OS with several of Spreadtrum's WCDMA and EDGE smartphone chipsets," Spreadtrum said in a press statement.
The affordable smartphone will not be using 3G networks, so consumers cannot expect it to be very fast, but most of its target markets will most likely be used to such connections. Users will be able to do the usual texting and voice calls with the device, but they will also be able to send email, use mobile applications and browse the Internet.
Aside from the $25 Firefox OS smartphone, Mozilla also unwrapped high-end handsets from manufacturers such as ZTE and Huawei.
The aggressiveness with which Mozilla has been championing open source projects might just work, but the low-end market might soon get much more crowded, as sticker prices of Android devices are made more affordable by budget manufacturers. Lenovo, for example, bought Motorola to grab a chunk of the mid-to-low-end smartphone market in Latin America. Microsoft is also trying to penetrate the low-end market with cheaper Windows smartphones.
The Spreadtrum-equipped Firefox OS handset might not be for everyone but it can be a valuable tool to empower people who invest every drop of sweat to earn a decent living.
