First Firefox OS Smartphone Has Arrived: Telefonica Prices ZTE Open At $90 In Spain, Latin American Markets Coming Soon

Back in February at the Mobile World Congress tradeshow a plethora of carriers pledged their support for Mozilla’s HTML-5 open web mobile platform, Firefox OS,?which is hoping to shake up the low-end smartphone segment. Today, the launch date of the first commercial Firefox OS phone has been confirmed: the ZTE Open will go on sale tomorrow in Spain, on Telefonica’s Movistar network. The handset will cost ?69 (around $90), which includes a pre-pay balance of??30 for prepaid customers plus a 4GB microSD card. The carrier is also offering an option of zero interest financing for post-paid customers. IHS Screen Digest analyst Ian Fogg described the pricing as “very compelling, commenting on the launch via?Twitter: “Featurephones are dead, finally…?Now there?s no price reason not to own a smartphone.” Telefonica said it also plans to offer the handset in additional markets “?in the coming weeks”?– name-checking?Colombia and Venezuela. When it announced ?support for Firefox OS?back in February it said its first Firefox-powered phones would be sold in Latin America and Spain. In the event, Spain gets first dibs.?Also today,?Telefonica confirmed the ZTE Open will be the first of “a number of Firefox OS devices” it will launch this year — “across a range of different price points”. Which suggests it’s also hoping to challenge Android’s expansive mid-tier, although this first handset sits firmly in the low end segment. Commenting on the launch in a statement, Luis Miguel Gilp?rez, CEO of Telef?nica Espa?a, said: ?We believe that smartphones need to be more open and that the web is the platform for making this possible. Consumers should not be locked to any one system but have the choice to consume the content they want and the flexibility to be able to take it with them when they change devices. This first open web device marks a significant milestone in making this possible. This is just the beginning as we plan to bring a wide range of Firefox OS devices to our customers.? This is not the only diversification effort Telefonica has made in the smartphone space in recent times. Just last week it announced a joint marketing effort with Microsoft to push the Windows Phone 8 platform?in a bid to dilute the power of Android and iOS. Firefox OS can be seen as another branch of the same strategy, as carriers seek ways to erode the dominance Google especially has established in smartphones. Figures

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