The Mobile World Congress opened in Barcelona on
Monday, with Firefox presenting its new operating system for smart
phones.
Mozilla, the maker of the popular Firefox internet browser, hopes
to compete with Google's Android operating system (OS) and Apple's
iOS for mobile phones, which dominate the market.
Since Mozilla is a non-profit organization, whose Firefox OS is
open-source, developers of mobile phone applications will be free to
sell their apps without needing to share revenue with Apple or
Google.
Mozilla hopes that its OS will further bring down mobile phone
prices.
It has won the backing of about a dozen wireless service providers
around the globe, including Deutsche Telekom, which wants to
introduce a relatively cheap smart phone made by the French-Chinese
Alcatel in Poland this summer, using the Firefox OS.
But the browser and OS maker hopes to score especially in growing
markets like South America.
The annual, five-day event in Barcelona, seen as the world's
largest exhibition for the cellphone and tablet industry, will also
feature new mobile payment methods and see companies like Nokia
introduce smart phones of under 200 euros (265 dollars). These would
compete with high-end products from Apple and Samsung.
All manufacturers are counting on a smartphone boom in Asia,
Africa and Latin America.
