Mozilla pits itself against Apple and Google’s 92% market share Madrid - Arabstoday   The makers of the Firefox web browser are developing a mobile operating system to compete with Apple's iOS and Google's Android. A little-known Spanish firm is set to provide the low-cost hardware

.When it finally makes the move, Mozilla will step into one of the hottest commercial arenas, pitting itself against Apple's iOS and Google's Android platform. The two platforms hold 92 percent of the global market, according to a new study by Strategy Analytics.
The Firefox maker will soon release its own mobile operating system - having recently revealed a first preview. For the hardware, it has hooked up with a little-known, yet suitably trendy-named firm called Geeksphone.
Based in Madrid, Geeksphone was founded in 2009 and has Telefónica as its carrier, a Spanish telecommunications giant with annual revenues in the 60-billion-euro range
But Geeksphone has "young tech entrepreneur" stamped all over it.
Co-founded Javier Agüera says the idea is to make affordable smartphones that work with Mozilla's open Web standards, and they are working on two devices for the start.
"The Keon is an entry level device and the Peak is a mid-to-high range device," says Agüera. "And what happens with Firefox is that it's able to run much better on lower end devices than its competitors."
Mozilla says that it wants to ensure that Internet users are not locked into a "vendor-controlled ecosystem like iTunes or Google's Android store."
"We fully align with that objective and that is why we are making Firefox OS a key pillar of our strategy," says Agüera.
One of Mozilla's core values is its adherence to open web standards. The mobile OS will be fully compatible with HTML5 - the latest[and still developing] web specification. But more than that, Mozilla is resolutely open source, meaning, technically, anyone can change the software. Similar to Android at its very start.
"The Firefox OS is based on HTML5 technology, which is the same technology used to build the web and websites, so there will be a way for them to search and to find apps in a discovery way. Because app stores play a dual purpose - they create the catalogue of applications and then allow people to discover those applications. With HTML5 you can still have a catalogue of applications that's searchable, which there won't be the same constraints on with the Mozilla OS," says Leach.

Source: DW