Mozilla revealed that MTN South Africa, Tigo (owned by Millicom) and Airtel (owned by Bharti Airtel) are working with the company to soon bring the first Firefox OS smartphones to Africa.
Firefox OS is a simple, lightweight mobile operating system built using HTML5 and is meant as a rival to platforms such as Android, Windows Phone and iOS.
The Operating system was built to be affordable and also appeal to the broadcast possible market. Back in February, Mozilla unveiled a Firefox Smartphone that cost just $25 and as of today, Firefox OS has launched with local partners in 25 markets across Europe, Latin America, Asia and Australia starting with Spain’s Telefónica being the first to launch the Firefox OS-based smartphone.
The continued growth of Firefox OS holds great promise for enabling millions more people to access the mobile Web at an affordable cost, while helping to remove control points in today’s closed mobile ecosystems,” said Mozilla vice-president for planning and ecosystems Rick Fant.
With the upcoming move into the African region, Firefox OS will soon be available on five continents but there’s still no word yet on which phones the operators intend offering their customers or how they will be customised for their markets.
