Telefonica, which remains dominant in Latin America and Spain, is wary of the burgeoning smartphone market becoming too reliant on Android – especially in rapidly emerging markets such as Brazil and Mexico. It has hitched its cart to Mozilla’s new Firefox OS, which was formally unveiled last week.
As a result, the company has been a key supporter of Mozilla’s Boot2Gecko project, which was first seen at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona this year. It has been under development for 18 months, and Telefonica has been supplying staff and resources for the last 12 months.
The free and open source Mozilla option, reduces licensing fees, and provides a quick, fluid platform that doesn’t require the latest and greatest high end smartphone hardware.
Brazil especially is seeing a boom, as the middle classes move from high end feature phones to low-mid range smartphones. Telefonica’s Brazilian interest, Vivo, is wary of making the same mistakes that were made in the first world when Google Android and Apple’s iPhones launched, and wants to get in on the ground floor with a competitive market proposal.
Telefonica Digital’s Carlos Domingo demonstrates the new OS
TD’s Carlos Domingo, Director of Product Development & Innovation, told CBR that he is proud that TD was the only telco in the world working on the platform before MWC 2012.
The platform uses a basic Linux kernel with the HTML5/Javascript based Mozilla platform straight on top, effectively rendering the OS as a webpage combined with offline caching. This significantly reduces the stack and produces enviable speed. It renders much more efficiently and will also reduce battery consumption.
It runs on the same Linux kernel as Google’s own Android OS, which means that any Android device could run Firefox OS – indeed the device has already been demoed on devices ranging from white label dev kits, through to Samsung Galaxy SII’s. Hackers and modders will love it.
One of its key advantages will be this simplicity – HTML5 is an open standard, so theoretically anyone can develop for it. The phone is basically a 24/7 browser with offline caching, keeping the process simple. This also means that it will ‘push’ update itself, both in terms of OS updates and security – which reduces one of Android’s key failings, its OS market fragmentation.
Despite the potential, Key is not underestimating the challenges involved.
"We recognise that we need to get many parts of our eco-system organised involved. We do not underestimate the enormity of the task ahead of us," he said.
At this point, Firefox’s user interface consists of a few home screens’ worth of apps, each of which can be launched by tapping a circular icon on the phone’s nicely responsive capacitive touch screen. The apps are web-based, but are cached onto the phone for offline use, and launch very quickly. No truly high end apps were on display, but Domingo did say that popular iOS/Android game ‘Cut the Rope’ was already working on the platform.
An early build of what the home screen will look like
However, Firefox remains in its early stages. There’s no central app store, and while Domingo demonstrated the HTML5 music player Grooveshark, there was no formal music or movie store. The camera utilities also remain rudimentary.
Mozilla already has Chinese smartphone makers ZTE and TCL (owners of the Alcatel One Touch brand) on board, and is talking to six more manufacturers.
TD CEO Mathew Key says the company wants to launch its first Mozilla smartphone in Brazil in 2013, which will cost less than $99. It may or may not be the first Firefox OS smartphone, however.
Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile), another Wholesale Applications Community and Mozilla partner, may beat them to the punch by launching its own product in Poland towards the end of this year.
Domingo offered no timeframe for a European launch, other than ‘later’ – following the Brazilian launch. He reiterated that the company’s work with Mozilla was not an exploitation exercise aimed at producing marketing revenues but that ‘engineering comes first’.
"For any business to be competitive, having one supplier is not a good thing. Especially in our markets such as LATAM, Android is already too dominant," he said.
"We hope [Firefox OS] can bring back some balance to the market."
Telefonica Digital CEO Mathew Key said that the company has no goals to get into the hardware game, as Orange (France Telecom) has been attempting to do in the UK market.
"We are clear about what we are good at and it’s not hardware," Key said.
Similarly, the company has no plans to develop its own app stores, music stores or movie stores, nor use TD to develop software to compete with market leaders for the sake of it.
"We also don’t want to be the next Facebook or Google. That game is over. We will partner the relevant people and compete with them as well. We don’t believe you can own the ecosystem from end to end, which is a very different approach," Key said.
Telefonica Digital split off from its parent company in September to provide a new technology and innovation centre to drive growth internationally, outside of the parent company’s traditional revenue streams.
Key wants it to be a fast growing, nimble, innovation hub that can operate as its own business, building, partnering and acquiring assets as it sees fit – and free from its lumbering parent company’s direct influence.
Early successes have included the Tu Me OTT (over-the-top) data-based smartphone messaging service, which has picked up 250,000 users in just 2 months after the launch, despite spending just €200,000 worldwide. It has seen particular popularity in the US and France, where Telefonica has a very limited presence. The product was developed in-house in just 100 days, leveraging the company’s existing software assets.
It has also purchased the JahJah IP telephony service, and has been setting up several Wayra Academies around Latin America and Europe. Wayra is Telefonica’s seed-stage start-up funding firm, started in April 2011. It has 11 academies currently, supporting 10,000 apps and 140 businesses, and is planning to expand further.
Key has already announced new offices for TD in central London, an important psychological break from Telefonica/O2’s offices in Slough. As CBR reported last week, the company aims to grow at 20% every year to €5bn by 2015.
