The Chinese smartphone manufacturer ZTE
is in talks with an unnamed European wireless carrier to launch a new
smartphone running on Mozilla’s Firefox OS during late 2013. This was
confirmed by chief executive officer of ZTE’s U.S. unit, Cheng Lixin in
an interview to Bloomberg during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las
Vegas.
In his interview, Cheng Lixin said,
We closely monitor the ecosystem and how it evolves.
If that is ready and if consumer studies support that data, then we may
launch one in U.S. also this year.
ZTE has seen a rapid growth in it’s
smartphones division and is now partnering with other OS makers to offer
new devices and reduce it’s dependence on Google’s Android OS which
currently runs on over 75 percent of the total devices shipped last
year. ZTE says that if the sales in Europe are encouraging and it sees
demand for the smartphone, the company would introduce devices running
on Firefox OS in the Unites States as well.
Mozilla’s Vice President, Jay
Sullivan,has said that the company has collaborated with a Chinese
manufacturer TCL, ZTE and Qualcomm to produce devices running on it’s
upcoming Firefox OS. In an encouraging prediction by Strategy Analytics,
the firm has said that Mozilla’s Firefox OS can attain 1% of the total
market share by the end of this year.
Though no details about the smartphone
have surfaced till now, but we expect to learn a bit more about the
smartphone and the Firefox OS during the Mobile World Congress in
Barcelona next month. Also, it is being rumored that the Firefox OS will
be seen running on entry level devices initially, and if it shows
encouraging signs of being able to compete with Android, we might see a
top-end smartphone boasting of Firefox OS as well.
