Mozilla has announced that it will be launching low-cost smartphones in India starting from this July. According to Mozilla prices can be expected to go up to $50 (approx Rs 3,000). Mozilla has partnered with China based Spreadtrum Communications for its low-cost chip solutions. The company is also working with various smartphone manufactures to keep the production costs down.
Mozilla Taiwan CEO Gong Li said:
"Mozilla initially launched Firefox smartphones in the Latin America and Europe markets in July 2013 and has sold about one million units, Gong said. Mozilla has been able to cooperate with only 1-2 mobile telecom carriers in each country in the two regional markets, but will instead cooperate with more than 10 retail chains in India, Gong indicated. Therefore, Mozilla expects better sales performance in the Indian market."
Gong Li said Mozilla will partner with more than 10 phone hardware manufacturers and 20 carriers to support Firefox OS in India. In addition to this, Firefox OS is coming to tablets too. Mozilla has roped in Foxconn Electronics and VIA technologies in developing the platform. Panasonic has also come forward for Firefox OS based TVs.
We are seeing a paradigm shift in the smartphone market with different and new operating systems like Firefox OS, Ubuntu, and Jolla coming to the market. In our opinion, the more choices the better but we may have to wait for the market to further develop to accommodate the small players.