Sony Mobile may be planning to release a new Xperia handset running on the newly announced Firefox OS according to Mobile Mag. So says Bob Ishida, Deputy CEO and Executive Vice President of Sony Mobile, speaking about a multi-year deal between the company and Telefonica to support Sony Xperia products.
“Our engineers are now working with Firefox OS Mobile and HTML5, evolving technologies which show great potential. In addition, we continue to work with our operator partners, including Telefónica, on a development project with an ambition to bring a product to market in 2014,” Ishida said.
Marieta del Rivero, General Manager of Telefónica’s Global Devices Strategy responded: “As well as the great opportunity we have in 2013, our further collaboration around a possible device on the Firefox OS mobile platform will create the opportunity to reach new segments of the market, allowing us to provide an even wider choice of premium Sony device offerings for our customers.”
The Firefox OS open-source mobile platform is being heavily backed by some oeprators as a way to reduce the dominance in the smartphone segment between Apple and Google. As well as Telefónica, Firefox has received support from 18 carriers in total including big hitters such as China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, KDDI and T-Mobile. The Firefox devices would be for more low-end hardware targeting emerging markets.
It will be interesting to see how this develops, but we’re not expecting the first devices to appear until 2014, so we’ll keep you posted if something tangible emerges. What are your thoughts on this – would you like to see a Sony Xperia device running Firefox OS? Or do you feel that the company should focus on its efforts in the Android space? We’d love to hear your comments below.
Via Telefonica [via Mobile Mag.
