Mozilla is working hard to make its Firefox OS a dominant player in the mobile OS market. It has already secured hardware partnerships with some big brands. But the thing that is crucial to its success is the developers who will be building apps the users need. And to lure the developers under the umbrella of Firefox OS, Mozilla has floated a new scheme.
On Thursday, Mozilla employee Havi Hoffman announced in a blog post that it will offer developer edition phones to programmers with compelling ideas for apps. The blog post read,
Wherever you are, if you can show you’ve got a great app idea and the skill to build it, we’d love to see your apps in the Marketplace when the Firefox OS launch begins later this summer. And to sweeten the deal, we’ll send a Firefox OS Developer Preview device for you to work with now.
When Firefox OS phones become available to consumers in select locales this summer, you’ll have an opportunity that only comes around once—a first-mover advantage in Firefox Marketplace. End users in Latin America, Eastern Europe and other launch locations will be on the lookout for playful and practical apps to install: games, tools, and utilities as well as locally relevant news, sports, travel, entertainment, review apps, and social sharing experiences. And you can build and submit them now!
Mozilla employees will review proposals from app developers, and the lucky ones will be sent a Geeksphone Keon handset. The program will last till the end of May, or when the limited handset inventory runs out. Interested app developers can apply through a form floated by Mozilla.
Mozilla is primarily targeting HTML5 app developers, as its mobile OS runs browser-based apps. The challenge is to offer unbounded user-experience using limited hardware resources, as the Firefox OS is primarily targeted to budget smartphones.
Source: Mozilla
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