ZTE, the world’s 4th largest mobile vendor, has announced that it is working on a Firefox OS-based smartphone that is likely to hit store shelves either at the end of this year or early next year. ZTE Executive Vice President He Shiyou disclosed the plan to journalists in a press event recently, telling not many details on the device though.
The Chinese company currently offers both Android and Windows Phone devices on the market. The plan is seen as a move to diversify the manufacturer’s portfolio. "We are trying to increase our efforts in coming up with our own operating system, while introducing products based on Android," explained ZTE Director of Corporate Branding & Communications David Dai Shu. "It's all part of our wider plans to create a better balance of products using various operating systems. We won't just rely on Android or Windows."
In fact, seeing how the patent war between Android and Apple has raged, particularly the recent battles concerning Samsung’s Android-powered devices and Apple’s iPhone, more and more smartphone manufacturers are seeking a different third-party operating platform in order to avoid getting involved in endless lawsuits with Apple. This certainly gives the Mozilla OS an edge to garner support from handset makers as well as mobile operators.
The new open-source OS is based entirely on HTML 5, meaning every phone feature can be developed as an HTML 5 application. With the hope of making app-writing an easier task for developers, Mozilla said the new phone architecture will “unlock many of the current limitations of web development on mobile, allowing HTML5 applications to access the underlying capabilities of a phone, previously only available to native applications.”
As good as the Firefox software sounds, Andriod and iOS are still the two operating systems leading the pack. Although Windows Phone is gaining momentum recently, the Apple/Android duopoly is considered to be unbreakable at the moment, which is why it will be difficult for the Firefox OS to set foot in the market. One foreseeable obstacle is to develop a mobile app market that is versatile enough to attract people to buy the handsets.
Well, it is still too early to say how the new OS will turn out. Nevertheless, one more choice is always a piece of good news for consumers.
Sources:
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/56470.php
http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/story/zte-launch-firefox-os-smartphones-shift-away-android/2012-09-19
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2012/07/02/firefox-mobile-os/
Monday, 8 October 2012
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