Spanish operator Telefónica will be the first company to market a smartphone based on the Firefox operating system. The ZTE Open will become available to consumers on Tuesday for a price of $90 along with a prepaid subscription.
Firefox announced the Open in February at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It looks to compete with less expensive Android devices on the low-end market. While its certainly a far cry from the iPhone or some of Google Android's other mobile devices, the Open looks to become a major player for users who are in the market for a cost-efficient smartphone.
The Open has a 3.5-inch screen and is powered by a 1GHz processor from Qualcomm. It offers users a 3.2 megapixel camera as well as support for WiFi and A-GPS, 512MB of integrated storage and 256MB of RAM, according to PC World.
Firefox OS will integrate Facebook and Twitter, Nokia's HERE maps, which users can access offline and the Firefox web browser.
The Open is only the beginning for Telefónica, which plans to launch several Firefox OS devices by the end of this year. The company expectes LG Electronics, Huawei Technologies and Sony will also offer smartphones basedon the platform within the near future. The phone will be offered in Spain, Columbia and Venezuela for a prie of $90 as well as a $39 balance and 4GB microSD card.
PC World cites a recent survey conducted by IDC, which suggests the playform is appealing to developers thus far. About 25 percent of the respondents said they were interested in Mozilla's platform, compared to Ubuntu and Tizen, two smartphone operating systems that Firefox will be competing with, which only garnered 19 and nine percent respectively. However, these numbers don't compare to Apple's iOS and Google's Android. 87 percent of respondents showed interst in Apple's iOS and 78 percent showed similar interest in Google's Andoird operating system. This means Mozilla has a lot of work to do before it can compete on the level of the highest smartphone operating systems on the market, but for now, it only seems to be after the low-end market.
You can see a gallery of photos of the Open HERE courtesy of CNET
