Mozilla will bring budget Firefox OS smartphones in India in coming months in association with Spice Retail and Intex.
Intex said Cloud FX will be the first Firefox OS device in India — priced in the sub Rs 2000 category.
The smartphone will be targeted at first time smartphone users in tier II cities and rural areas and is expected to hit the market first week of August.
Cloud FX will feature dual-SIM, 3.5-inch screen, 1 GHz processor, 2.0 MP camera, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth enabled, etc.
Earlier, Motorola introduced its budget phones on Android KitKat OS. Google Android OS dominates the Indian smartphone market.
At the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2014, Mozilla announced the launch of its Firefox OS open mobile ecosystem targeting the growing telecom markets. In the last one year — since MWC 2013 — Firefox OS devices reached in 15 mobile phone markets with four global telecom operators and handsets from three manufacturers, said Mozilla in February 2014.
The growth of Mozilla has been supported by the availability of budget chip. At MWC 2014, chip vendor Spreadtrum launched WCDMA and EDGE reference designs for Firefox OS as well as the industry’s first chipset for $25 smartphones, the SC6821.
Though there are indications for bringing smartphones priced at $25, Spice did not reveal the price of the new smartphone. It will be affordable and the latest version of Firefox OS in Spice’s upcoming smartphones will support 100 percent HTML5, said Spice in a statement. These devices will feature dual SIM dual standby mode.
Earlier, several telecom operators started utilizing the Firefox OS. For instance, Telefonica said it will sell Firefox OS phones in eight more markets including Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Panama.
Deutsche Telekom will add four new markets such as Croatia, the Czech Republic, Macedonia and Montenegro.
Firefox operating system is yet to become the hot destination for several smartphone vendors.
IDC earlier predicted that year-on-year Firefox OS volumes will grow by six times in the smartphone category alone. Canalys earlier said Windows Phone OS grew 69 percent year-on-year and dipped 6 percent sequentially in Q4 2013. Android shipments grew 54 percent and iOS shipments rose 7 percent.
“$25 handsets are currently out of the reach of Google and even the lowest-cost Android handset vendors. It pushes Firefox OS into feature-phone territory, potentially signaling the beginning of the end for the category,” said Nick Dillon, senior analyst at Ovum, in February.
Mozilla will be a destination for expensive phone makers as well. Earlier, Chinese phone vendor ZTE said it will launch Grand Memo II LTE with 6 inch screen, one of the first Firefox OS 1.3 devices, the ZTE Open C as well as its brand new user interface MiFavor 2.3.
