The first Firefox OS-powered smartphones are expected to arrive in 2013 and telecoms equipment makers Alcatel-Lucent and ZTE are the first manufacturers signed up to make the new phones.
Last week, Mozilla announced the availability of the beta Firefox OS Simulator, which allows users with Macs, PCs and Linux computers to test how the new OS will run.
The Boot2Gecko project, as it is code-named, is in the early stages and according to Mozilla it is angling for a 1.0 release of the simulator to allow developers to test how their apps will run on the new OS.
According to Slashdot, the first Firefox OS tablets and smartphones are expected to hit the market early next year and ZTE and Alcatel-Lucent will reportedly make the first devices.
Could Mozilla put a dent in the smartphone market?
It will be interesting to see the impact Mozilla could have on the already crowded smartphone market, but its timing could be impeccable.
A very wounded RIM is expected to reveal BlackBerry 10 on 30 January and it is still only early days for devices based on Windows Phone 8.
The smartphone market is largely led by Google’s Android OS and Apple’s iOS platform – sewn up, actually – but that doesn’t mean the world isn’t ripe for change.
Mozilla already has 24pc of the world’s browser space and as cloud services become more integral to our daily lives, the advent of smartphones as cloud access devices than merely ‘clever’ phones is a market that is still technically only in the early days of its evolution.
