telecom bd

Norwegian mobile-phone company Telenor ASA has announced partnership with Mozilla, which has launched an operating system for smartphones to challenge Apple’s iOS, Windows Phone and Android.

Mozilla, which is a not-for-profit platform, has rolled out its new offer at a press conference attended by hundreds of journalists from across the world to pave the beginning of the Mobile World Congress in the Spanish tourism city of Barcelona.

It is abuzz with more than 70,000 experts, telecom officials and government representatives.

The four-day global conference began in Barcelona on Monday.

Over 70,000 executives of mobile phone companies, technology service providers, analysts, researchers and policymakers from Bangladesh and many other countries are attending the event.

Organisers say the GSMA Mobile World Congress styled “New Mobile Horizon” is creating opportunities to share knowledge while policy issues would come up in many group meetings and workshops.

The unveiling the Mozilla Firefox OS operating system for the smartphones was just one advancement to mark the opening of the global event.

Telenor, the parent company of Bangladesh’s largest mobile-phone company Grameenphone, has announced its partnership with Mozilla, which is moving towards bringing an open mobile ecosystem to its global business units.

Telenor’s partnership was announced at a time when many other global allies give Mozilla’s Firefox OS a mobile foothold. Apart from Telenor, partners backing the browser-based mobile operating system include phone maker LG Electronics and 17 other mobile network operators across the world. The first phones are due in the second quarter.

The new operating system by Mozilla is expected to mark big changes in the way people interact with mobile devices as it could ditch a closed “ecosystem” as Firefox OS is not a walled garden like Apples’s IOs or Android.

It is based on the open web, which means interacting with many of its HTML5-based apps will be like visiting websites through a browser, opening temporarily as apps, and closing. The phone, in essence, is a browser. Mozilla says Firefox phones will be the world’s first “open web devices.”

Welcoming Mozilla’s move, Telenor says it will include the operation system in Serbia, Montenegro and Hungary, and Firefox OS smartphones will be available to Telenor customers during the second half of the year. Asia will follow. Bangladesh will also be part of it, though it was not immediately clear exactly when.

Telenor has welcomed the move.

“We see a great potential in an open Web-based operating system. With HTML5 at the core of every feature on this phone, you remove barriers to development that are common with existing mobile ecosystems. This opens the door to the wide community of developers, who now have an opportunity to contribute to a new kind of smartphone,” said Jon Fredrik Baksaas, CEO of Telenor.

In a statement Baksaas said Telenor is committed to spreading the mobile Internet among its customers, and by embracing Mozilla’s open Web platform, the global company aims to give more customers a high quality mobile Internet experience, complete with applications that are tailored to local needs.

Development for the phone is in the hands of many, ultimately enriching the experience for the customer, the statement said.

“The cooperation with Mozilla is yet another initiative originating from Telenor Digital Services. We want to bring the smartphone experience to more customers, and by offering an affordable device, with rich and locally relevant apps, we expect to see Firefox OS phones serving as a stimulus for data growth in our markets,” added Baksaas.

“Telenor has been a dedicated partner in bringing Firefox OS to its realization,” said Gary Kovacs, Chief Executive Official of Mozilla.

“Our companies share a common vision of open Web devices powering the mobile experience. We are excited that individuals in Serbia, Montenegro and Hungary will be among the earliest to experience Firefox OS and contribute to its evolution.”

Mozilla won commitments to sell Firefox OS phones from carriers such as America Moovil, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat, Hutchison Three Group, KDDI, KT, MegaFon, Qtel, SingTel, Smart, Sprint, Telecom Italia Group, Telefonica, Telenor, Telstra, TMN, and VimpelCom.

Handset manufacturers on board are Alcatel, ZTE, LG Electronics, and Huawei, with a boost from chipmaker Qualcomm.

The first phones should arrive in the second quarter of the year, said Mozilla Chief Technology Officer Brendan Eich.

While this is not going to be necessarily a big foothold for Mozilla in the US market, Firefox OS is geared mainly for more-budget-conscious regions as the first markets for the phone will be Brazil, Colombia, Hungary, Mexico, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Spain, and Venezuela, Mozilla said.

Telefonica, Mozilla's first and strongest Firefox OS ally, plans to push the phone aggressively in Latin America for customers who want something more powerful than a feature phone but not as expensive as an iPhone.

Its first phones will arrive mid-2013, with new models in late 2013 and 2014, the company said.

As the rivals are very strong, this is not going to be an easy game for Mozilla.

Mozilla is not like other competitors as it uses its software not to please shareholders rather to foster openness on the Web. Still, Mozilla is hamstrung because Firefox has effectively no presence at all in the fast-growing mobile market.

Firefox is not allowed on iOS, and it is not the default on Android, which means Mozilla has little leverage in charting the course of the Web.

And with walled gardens, patent barriers, and proprietary technology so commonplace in the mobile market, it is precisely the area where Mozilla feels the greatest need to inject some openness.

"The world still needs Mozilla," Eich said.

courtasy: bdnews24.com