Mozilla To Sell '$25' Firefox OS Smartphones In India

mrspoonsi (2955715) writes Mozilla, the organisation behind the Firefox browser, has announced it will start selling low-cost smartphones in India within the "next few months". Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, the firm's chief operating officer suggested the handsets, which will be manufactured by two Indian companies, would retail at $25 (£15) [note: full article paywalled]. They will run Mozilla's HTML5 web-based mobile operating system, Firefox OS. The firm already sells Firefox-powered phones in Europe and Latin America. Firefox OS has come a long way even in the year since we saw a tech demo at Linux Fest Northwest.

Comments

Any chance at getting one?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

At $25, I'd be in for at least one, just to have a look at this 'firefox OS' in its native habitat (as well as it likely being at least better than most dumbphones in terms of usability, probably not enough screen, for $25, to take on the $100+ 'smartphone' scene. Any chance of these showing up stateside?

A mobile OS that isn't Apple's Garden of Pure Ideology, or linked directly to the mothership in Redmond if you actually want to do much of anything would also be nice to see.

Re:Any chance at getting one?

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

+1 on this one. Mozilla should not commit the same mistake as the OLPC project in restricting sales to selected Third World regions. It should sell the phone wherever there are buyers, if not at your local telco or Walmart, then online. More sales in the West means more phones falling into the hands of geeky bums with the potential and time to tinker/mod the phone into something just a wee bit cooler than the default factory-shipped OS. Will the phone have more juice than the Raspberry Pi? Maybe it could sell to the maker crowd.

Re:Any chance at getting one?

[gQuigs]

How about $100?
Announcement post; https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/...
US store: http://item.ebay.com/291125433...

What about Apps ?

[singhv]

So developers have to start building apps for this OS ? There are $75 smartphones with android OS available in India. Windows-Nokia phone have not been able to catch up in the India although Nokia was leader at one point of time

For the Fi-curious

[NotFamous]

You can get a Firefox phone right now, available for use in Germany, Russia, United Kingdom, and the United States. It is $99, and comes with a 4-inch screen, dual core 1.2Ghz and 512MB RAM. It is the ZTE Open C, available on eBay. Just search for Firefox OS, and you'll find it.They link to it from the Firefox OS site. http://item.ebay.com/291125433...

Re:Your wish is available now

[gstoddart]

Perhaps you missed the story yesterday where Google was making the app security on Android even less secure, and in such a way as to prevent users from disabling components which would block ads.

Sure, you can install apps from other locations ... but there are some apps you can't install unless you root the phone.

Google is no saint in this regard either. They have some illusions of open-ness, but they also ensure their advertising services and the like can't be selectively disabled.

Hell, the very act of turning on the GPS in my Nexus 7 causes Google to prompt me to say yes to their own location services.

Android stuff are almost as directly linked to that particular mothership as Apple or Microsoft.

Re:Your wish is available now

[MightyYar]

Damn, you know you are right! I confused my Samsung with an iPhone because of the rounded corners.