Mozilla Releases Firefox OS For Mobiles!

Working in partnership with Spanish phone manufacturers Geeksphone, Mozilla is launching two preview smartphones(Keon and Peak), which will be the first

phones to run Firefox OS. Currently, Mozilla will only be selling them to developers in order to build the app market. Based completely on open web

standards, all apps running on this OS can be coded using HTML5 standard APIs, rather than any proprietary language. According to Mozilla's Stormy

Peters(Director of Website,Mozilla), the greatest advantage of using HTML5 for the OS is that “You're not locked in to a vendor-controlled ecosystem. You

can distribute your app through the Firefox Marketplace, your own website, or any other store based on Mozilla's open app store technology.” According to

Mozilla, the open web standards used to implement the OS and apps will allow manufacturers to sell very cheap smartphones, and this will be targeted more

towards emerging markets such as Brazil. The ease of making an app for this OS will definitely be a draw for developers, as existing websites just need to

be changed a bit to convert them into web apps, as outlined on their own tutorial: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Apps/Getting_Started. Mozilla provides

options to preview Firefox OS by building and installing from the source code itself, as well as installing a simulator that runs apps for testing

purposes. With the advent of cheap android phones in markets such as India, and competition from other open-source alternatives such as Ubuntu OS for

mobiles, it is still unseen as to how popular the Firefox OS can get. However, by targeting emerging markets instead of markets already dominated like the

US, Firefox OS is likely to have a better chance of being accepted into the mainstream smartphone space.









What are your feelings about this new OS? Is there too much competition in the mobile OS space? Let us know in the comments below!