ZTE Open: World's First Firefox OS Smartphone Launched

Spain's network carrier Telefonica on Tuesday has begun sales of the world's first-ever Firefox OS based smartphone, ZTE Open, in its home market.

Telefonica is offering the new Firefox phone for €69 (around ₹5,400) which includes €30 (₹2,400) worth talk time credit to prepaid consumers. The company also said it plans to release the smartphone to other Spanish-speaking countries - Colombia and Venezuela, in the coming weeks.

XTE Open sports a 3.5-inch HVGA TFT display powered by 1GHz single-core Qualcomm MSM7225A processor with 256MB RAM and 512MB ROM. Its storage space can be further expanded up to 32GB via microSD card. The smartphone ships with a single 3.1-megapixel main camera and a 1200 mAh battery.

At the launch event of the phone, Firefox OS makers, Mozilla, Chief Operating Officer, Jay Sullivan said, "The launch of Firefox OS marks an incredibly exciting time for the mobile industry. Firefox OS powers the first smartphones built entirely on Web technologies and will stimulate an inspiring new wave of innovation for the Web."

"We are proud to work with partners like Telefonica which see the potential to deliver an experience for first time smartphone users that will delight them and really put the power of the Web in people's hands," he added.

The new Firefox OS smartphone is expected to target first-time smartphone users who are upgrading from feature phones. To keep up in the martket, Mozilla has to add as many apps as possible into its ecosystem. It will be a huge challenge for the new Firefox OS to compete against the three major leaders in smartphone operating system market - Google Android, Apple iOS and Microsoft Windows Phone OS, which are already boasting close to two million applications in their ecosytems.

With a sub-₹5,500 price-tag, the ZTE Phone can fancy a good reception in price-sensitive markets like India. As of now, there are no details of when the Firefox OS run ZTE Open would be made available in the subcontinent or any other major smartphone markets.

Key specifications of ZTE Open: