Mozilla's $50 Mobile Phones : Will they Attract Users From Indian Mobile Market
The dawn of smartphones has ushered us into a new era of changing working styles and huge rise of two companies on which these smartphones depend. Apple and Google continue to fight over the smartphone space and while Apple is considered the phone to buy with its brand name, Google’s Android has taken the world by storm by its sheer presence.
This bipolar scenario is quickly becoming a monopoly as well. With Google aiming low with its Android One, the next billion phones will most probably be Android run. They are taking “the next billion” so seriously that they are now readying to invest a whopping $1 Billion to subsidize the affordable smartphones even further!
This means that Google will dictate its terms on how we interact with pretty much everything. This scene is not exactly a bad one right now, but such strong power in the hands of one company always ends up badly just because like any monarchy, the system is as good as the monarch and once that changes, so does the style of ruling.
With Google, once Larry Page and Sergey Brin retire or worse are no more, it will be difficult to imagine what will become of all the Androids.
While such thoughts are not on everyone’s mind, most people do think that monopolies are always bad and some even think that Google’s Android is not completely open source and should be. Mozilla is a company of that sort. They have been working on its own operating system- Firefox OS, that aims to be completely open source.
The OS aims to hit the market from the lower end with super-low priced smartphones that need minimal power to give good performance. Backed by 20 mobile operators and 10 hardware makers, Mozilla has the force to become a prominence in the mobile market.
They have already had a beta run in Europe and Latin America where they sold a million phones. This number is not huge compared to its competition but they now are battle tested.
Coming to India, they have tied up with Spice and the first phone should be launched in July itself. Intex business head Sanjay Kumar Kalirona also mentions same things.
The most important point is the price that according to Mozilla COO Gong Li has been kept $50. According to him, ‘with low-cost chip solutions developed by China-based Spreadtrum Communications and cooperation with smartphone ODMs, Mozilla has succeeded in keeping production cost down to US$25 for models carrying retail prices of up to US$50.’
There are two things of note here-
1. How will Mozilla deal with Android One?
2. How will Mozilla deal with its lack of app market?
There is a reason why Android is successful and even companies like Samsung are not making any dent with its Tizen and Bada. The app system is developed.
With Android One, Google is attempting to woo the same smartphone makers as Mozilla. Therefore, it is necessary for Mozilla to tackle these problems in order to succeed. This month and the next (August) will tell us how well does Mozilla handle these elephants in the room!
