ZTE Prepares the More Sophisticated Firefox OS Smartphone

As one supporter of Firefox OS, ZTE looks serious to provide smartphones that can run alternative operating systems. It is seen from the plan of the Chinese companies that are preparing a second handset with the OS that will slide in 2014.

The plan revealed by ZTE executive VP He Shiyou when interviewed Michael Kan at the Expo Comm China 2013. According Shiyou, the handset will be released in the first half of 2014 with a larger screen, two-core processor, and the user interface has been overhauled again while ensuring an affordable price. ZTE is currently said to sell about 100,000 units of ZTE Open, which he calls exceeds supply. He hoped that the number will be doubled later.

Shiyou said that ZTE is a series about small-scale Open but he believes that smartphones with HTML5-based OS will be increasingly relevant as the faster network technologies such as LTE will reduce the reliance on software in a handset. He added that in the future there will be no app store business model as it is run today.