MWC 2013 Video: Why Carriers Love The Open Firefox OS

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Christian Heilmann from Mozilla talks about the benefits of the free mobile OS

Last Sunday, Mozilla announced it had managed to sign up 18 network operators to try one of the phones running its Firefox OS. This number has now added another adventurous carrier willing to give it a try.

MWC Mobile World Congress 2013At Mobile World Congress 2013, our colleagues from Gizmodo Germany interviewed Christian Heilmann, principal developer evangelist at Mozilla, to find out more about the OS and what makes it different from market leaders Android and iOS.

Flying the standards

Announced in 2012, Firefox OS (previously known as Boot to Gecko) is an open source operating system for phones and tablets. According to Heilmann, it looks “like any other operating system for a mobile device”, except it is built entirely from HTML5 code.

Mozilla has just opened the Firefox Marketplace to mobile users, and the HTML5 apps on offer already include such favourites as Facebook, Twitter, SoundCloud, Box, Nokia Here, and Pulse News.

The system was designed primarily for developing markets, with its very basic hardware requirements and tools designed to minimise expenses related to data consumption. The first countries to try Firefox OS include Brazil, Colombia, Hungary, Mexico, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Spain and Venezuela, with phones made by ZTE, Alcatel and LG.

Heilmann said carriers like the system because it enables billing for apps, and doesn’t tie them up with senseless terms and conditions.

To find out more, watch the video below:

 This first appeared on TechWeekEurope UK.