Telefonica, Mozilla enter joint venture

Spanish telecom operator Telefonica and maker of Firefox Web browser Mozilla have joined hands to create an open platform for smartphones. Both the companies are to develop the new Operating System (OS) on a hardware platform based upon a Qualcomm chipset The new platform will combine HTML5 with some of the core elements of Linux technology to do away with the need for a separate operating system, according to the Reuters. The Open Web Devices platform (OWD), to be launched in 2012, will enable the delivery of smartphone capabilities at low price points, according to Telefonica. Telef?nica and Mozilla are developing this OS on a hardware platform based upon a Qualcomm chipset. Telefonica said Mozilla’s Boot to Gecko Project unlocks the current limitations of Web development for mobile by providing new features and APIs that will demonstrate just how powerful HTML5 can be. Cutting some layers of traditional operating systems allows the new platform to be used on smartphones with lower processing power and a smaller cost of materials. Telefonica’s Digital unit Product Development & Innovation director Carlos Domingo was quoted by Reuters as saying that this enables significantly cheaper prices than the low-end Android models when they come to market later this year. The smartphone market is being currently dominated by Google’s Android and Apple. For Carlos Domingo, Telefonica Digital director of product development, the development spells massive opportunities in Latin America, where smartphones are not catching on because of their prohibitive prices.  A new phone on the Mozilla platform, could be ‘more than 10 times cheaper’ than an iPhone, Domingo said. It could even be competitive compared to the cheapest phone on Finnish giant Nokia’s Lumia line, which runs on the Windows platform and will begin shipping this year at 189 euros. “We can probably do two to three times cheaper than that,” said Domingo, who aims to have the phones commercialised in six to eight months. Brazil is a typical target market for Telefonica because it has 75 per cent mobile penetration rate, but just five percent on smartphones.