Six more operators have joined Telefonica in pledging support for Mozilla’s upcoming mobile operating system, indicating the carriers’ desire to promote alternative platforms to iOS or Android, and their need to look ahead to the new cloud-oriented systems.
Mozilla’s offering, unveiled as Boot2Gecko but now renamed Firefox Mobile OS, is one of a new breed of mobile operating systems which carries out most of its tasks in an HTML5 browser, layered on top of a cutdown Linux kernel and geared to always-on cloud services. Mozilla promises a phone architecture which relies entirely on the web to enable HTML5 applications, while providing complete access to core device APIs, so that the apps can have equal functionality to native offerings. Initially Boot2Gecko was to be Android based, but now nearly all elements of Android have been removed from the Linux foundation.
The new OS now has the support of Deutsche Telekom/T-Mobile, Telecom Italia, Sprint, Telenor, Etisalat and Smart as well as Telefonica, which signed up in February. The OS will appear on consumer devices in early 2013, and Telefonica has already said it will use Firefox on low cost smartphones, which it will debut in its Vivo unit in Brazil.
Sprint also believes browser-based OSs will help offer smartphone capabilities at featurephone prices. “Firefox Mobile OS can help us drive an HTML5-based platform for creating lower cost smartphone options for prepaid, postpaid and wholesale customers,” said the cellco’s product chief, Fared Adib.
Mozilla has also announced two device partners, both from China – ZTE and TCL (which uses the Alcatel OneTouch brand). Both will use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon systems-on-chip. This will support the browser maker’s aim of letting HTML5 developers access core phone functions ‘ the new version of Qualcomm’s SDK allows programmers to access imaging, audio and location capabilities incorporated in the Snapdragon S4 8960 processor.
Mozilla is now accepting submissions for its Mozilla Marketplace storefront, which allows developers to create and distribute cross-platform apps optimized for any HTML5-enabled device, regardless of operating system. This is part of the broader Mozilla Web Apps platform, which includes new web APIs which the open source organization plans to submit to the W3C standards body, as well as a new digital identity system which links apps to the user, not the device or OS. The consumer launch of the full software platform, including Firefox Mobile OS, will follow late this year, with handsets from early 2013.
If Firefox Mobile does make a big splash on affordable smartphones, Nokia ‘ whose core strength should lie in the midmarket ‘ may be ruing the day it cancelled its own development of a Linux-based cloud platform for mass market devices. Called Meltemi, and a project which played to the company’s real strengths, it was canned last month, according to reports, leaving Nokia to enhance its current, but ageing, low end platform, Series 40, and hope to squeeze Windows Phone down into smaller devices.
That makes it even more reliant on the Microsoft OS, though Nokia’s chairman, Risto Siilasmaa, says the Finnish firm has a back-up plan should its gamble on Windows Phone not pay off. Despite expressing confidence in the Microsoft OS, and Nokia’s decision to back away from Symbian, his comments will be taken as a sign of doubt in the alliance ‘ coming just after Microsoft unveiled WP8, but said current devices, such as Nokia’s Lumia family, would not be upgradeable.
Siilasmaa, who took over as chairman in May, said on a Finnish TV interview that Nokia had a ‘contingency plan’ should the upcoming WP8 ‘fail to live up to expectations’. The comments echo CEO Stephen Elop’s insistence that Nokia is still in control of its own destiny, and has future strategies which are entirely separate from the Windows commitment. He has promised ‘future disruptions’ which are not connected to Windows Phone, but has offered few details.
In his first public comments since becoming chairman, Siilasmaa emphasized that Nokia had made the right decision to move away from Symbian, whose market share ‘has come down close to zero’, he said, dealing another blow to Elop’s promises of 2011, that Symbian would have many years of life left in it. Instead, rapid transition away from the end-of-life OS has helped create challenges for Nokia, especially in the important midmarket, where it is vulnerable to Android. Elop recently acknowledged that Android handsets had fallen in price far more quickly than Nokia had foreseen, especially in China. “It happened so fast that Nokia’s situation has now become difficult, but we keep honing our strategy,’ he said in an interview.
Siilasmaa also praised Elop’s CEOship since taking the helm in fall 2010, saying: “He came in at a tough time’, and had a ‘good and transparent’ management style. According to Finnish TV channel YLE, he added that Nokia would continue to make cuts until it restored its competitiveness.