Firefox Made a Phone

Hello bloggers and gamers all over the globe. Firefox is an well know for his Web Browser. I think all of the people in world used it at once. But the big news is it launches a phone with his own OS.

Can a browser transform into a phone? Firefox maker Mozilla certainly hopes so, but skepticism among analysts has been the backdrop to Mozilla's claims of growing customer interest in itssmall, plasticky, and brightly colored Firefox phones.

Those phones have seen rapid expansion of availability in their first month on the market, from initial sales only in Spain, to now include Venezuela, Colombia, and soon eBay customers in the U.S. and the U.K.

he Firefox OS phones serve two purposes, according to Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi. She said that the development of Firefox OS is about Mozilla "getting into the mobile space, and carriers being less dependent on Android" for low-cost phones.

The carrier-free ZTE Open phone will be sold, including shipping, for $79.99 in the U.S. and 59.99 pounds in the U.K. In the three other countries, the phones are tied to carriers -- so far, that's meant only Telefonica.

Christian Heilmann, Mozilla's principal developer evangelist, told CNET that the phones have been well-received so far. "Feedback is quite positive," he said, adding that most people are saying that they're using the Firefox phone as "either a beginner phone, or a smartphone that's replacing a feature phone."

And Li Gong, Mozilla's senior vice president for mobile devices and the company's president of Asia operations, said that "one Chinese guy in Spain wanted to buy 100 phones to take back to Hong Kong."

Mozilla is betting on attracting users based in part on the phone's low prices, comparable to those of a feature phone, while telling developers that building apps will be like building a Web site because the operating system embraces HTML5 and CSS3.

Some other selling points for the phones include the ability for in-app purchases to be charged to the carrier, precluding the need for credit cards, and the phones come with features that remain important in developing markets, such as FM band radios built in.

Hanging success on those factors is not a sure thing, however.

Jan Dawson, the chief telecoms analyst at Ovum, said that Mozilla's inability to get a U.S. or U.K. carrier to offer the phone reflects the inherent weakness in the strategy.

Beyond 2013, Mozilla will take a stab at some higher-end hardware in Japan with Sony, while it continues to push Firefox phones into newer low-cost markets like China and southeast Asia.

But even there the phones will face difficulties, said Mozilla's Li. "We consider this a low-cost phone, but in some markets it's not low-cost enough." China, Li said, will require a different strategy, along with different hardware: most phones sold there are not supported by the carriers, and China is a CDMA-band only country, not GSM or dual-band.

Perhaps the biggest hill the Firefox phone must climb in order to thrive is one of perception. It doesn't have the backing of the billions of dollars needed to compete with Android and iOS, as Windows Phone does, and it's not clear yet that Web developers will migrate to HTML5 apps as willingly as Mozilla claims they will.

Major redesigns for Firefox on desktops and on Android have paid off for Mozilla in the past. Mobile phones, though, could be the snare that catches the 'fox.

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