The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain was all a buzz this morning as little-known ZTE from China unveiled the ZTE Open, a smartphone that runs on Mozilla’sFirefox mobile operating ecosystem.
Besides the show in Spain, ZTE plans to work with service provider Telefónica and releases these units first in Venezuela and Colombia in mid-2013. No plans were announced for the North American more, yet.
The ZTE Open is an entry-level smartphone targeted at young professionals and people on limited budgets looking to make the move from a feature phone to their first smartphone. It features a 3.5-inch, HVGA TFT touchscreen display and has 256MB RAM and 512MB ROM combined with a 3.2MP camera. It supports Bluetooth 2.1, WIFI 802.11b/g/n and AGPS and has a 1200mAH battery.
He Shiyou, ZTE EVP and head of the Mobile Devices Division, said ZTE continues to push the boundaries with the aim of bringing customers the very latest that mobile technology has to offer.
Brendan Eich, Co-founder and CTO of Mozilla said Firefox OS brings powerful open Web technologies to the smartphone market, giving users more choice and more options that reflect their lifestyle.
Mozilla’s Firefox OS is HTML5-based and open source so ZTE Open users will be able to run Web apps and view their favourite Web sites without losing features. This includes dynamic content such as personalised search services.
Mozilla’s Firefox OS is free from restrictions. It provides an open standard platform for developers looking to create HTML5-based Web sites and apps. Developers will be able to distribute their apps through the Firefox Marketplace.
Not expecting any manufacturer to try the firefox OS. Like the Chrome OS, it’s a waste of R&D.