Hey, gecko, move over for another lizard. However, you won't have to worry about having one steal your insurance-company gig. This high-tech reptile only has eyes on the likes of Apple
Mozilla, the parent organization of the Firefox browser, plans to launch its mobile operating system, formerly known as Boot2Gecko, or B2G, in early 2013. B2G is open source, license-free, and built on HTML5, the latest Web standard. Because it is based on Web technology, it should allow for cheaper handsets because of lower hardware and RAM requirements than needed by devices built around proprietary software.
Another mobile OS ecosystem -- a competitive one, certainly -- would be a welcome addition for mobile carriers in their struggles to keep flesh-eating handset subsidies from eating their bottom lines. Sprint Nextel and Deutsche Telecom have agreed to support the Mozilla mobile OS -- renamed Firefox OS -- on devices that run Qualcomm's
Phone makers ZTE and Alcatel
Markets such as Brazil may be the perfect environment for Firefox OS to grow up. Ars Technica spoke with Mozilla evangelist Christian Heilmann, who explained that the OS can run on low-end devices developed for the emerging world. If that is indeed the case, Nokia
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