Mozilla's $50 Firefox OS smartphones reportedly launching in India this month

Mozilla will launch a series of inexpensive Firefox OS smartphone models in the Indian market this month, at prices of up to US$50 or around Rs 3,000, company COO and Mozilla Taiwan CEO Gong Li reported to Digitimes.   When launched in Latin America and some European markets in July 2013, Firefox OS smartphones sold only about one million units, Gong said. Mozilla could partner with only one or two telecom operators in these countries which brought a relatively lukewarm response towards these ultra-cheap smartphones. However, it expects to meet a different fate in India as Mozilla is seeking cooperation with more than 10 retail chains here.   With low-cost chip solutions developed by China-based Spreadtrum Communications and cooperation with smartphone ODMs, Mozilla has been successful at keeping its production costs below US$25 for models that will retail at US$50, Gong said.   With 10 hardware makers and more than 20 mobile telecom carriers supporting its Firefox OS platform, Mozilla aims to sell 10 million Firefox smartphones over the next year.   Firefox has not stopped at just smartphones. In its conversation with Digitimes, Gong let out that Taiwan-based Foxconn Electronics and VIA Technologies have participated **in developing Firefox tablets** , while Panasonic plans to launch **Firefox OS-powered smart TVs.**   It’s raining budget smartphones in India, with key players like Motorola, Nokia and Asus introducing powerful smartphones at budget prices. But with Mozilla launching low-cost smartphones, we might see Android lose its grip on the budget smartphone market . Just like Android, the Firefox OS embraces open standards which makes it highly flexible to customisations, and the platform will primarily make use of HTML5 web apps that can be developed very easily, according to the company.