Firefox operating system coming to mobile phones next year

A new Firefox mobile OS device will be available next year, according to an announcement made by Sony at the Mobile World Congress 2013 convention in Barcelona on Monday. This makes Sony the fifth company to commit to Firefox OS devices along with LG, Huawei, ZTE and Alcatel.

According to Techradar.com, the Japanese manufacturer teamed up with Telefonica with the goal of making a device running on HTML-5 friendly software and bringing it to market in 2014.

One student from Sam Houston State University is interested to see how the device will fare next year.

“It’s pretty cool to see that Mozilla’s doing their own thing,” senior student Christopher Valva said. “I’d like to see how well it will do against other OS systems like Android or Apple.”

Earlier during the conference, Chinese manufacturer ZTE became the first company to reveal its Firefox enabled phone, the ZTE Open, which will go on sale later this year.

Sony plans on bringing a more premium experience, with the company amply supporting the “great potential” of Mozilla’s mobile offering, the company announced.

Bob Ishida, deputy CEO and executive vice president at Sony Mobile Communications, said that they are already at work with their device.

“At Sony Mobile we continue to evaluate innovative technologies that can help deliver the premium user experiences that Sony’s consumers expect,” Ishida said. “Our engineers are now working with Firefox OS Mobile and HTML5, evolving technologies which show great potential.

According to Slashgear.com, Mozilla already has an app base with many apps such as Facebook and Twitter already available for the platform.

Mozilla also said that the Firefox OS devices will have affordable price tags in order to appeal to more consumers.