Mozilla SELLS FIREFOX MOBILES ... in Greece

Phones based on the Mozilla Firefox platform have been targeted at far flung places such as Bangladesh and Brazil, but now a major European network has them for sale.

Cosmote is the biggest mobile network in Greece, is 40 per cent owned by Deutsche Telekom, and has just started selling the 3.5-inch Alcatel One Touch C, and the 4.5-inch Alcatel One Touch Fire E.

The bigger phone sells for €109 and the small one for €89. This is pretty much in line with the SIM-free price on Ebay.

As one might expect, it’s a pretty basic smartphone and even the more expensive E only has a five megapixel camera, a 960 x 540 pixel display, and is 3G.

Until now, Mozilla has fought shy of selling its phones in Europe, although there is some developer support, particularly through Telefonica, which sees the OS as a way to keep subscribers from spending all their money with Apple and Google.

Telefonica particularly wants to see feature phone customers on its South American networks move to Firefox before they discover Android and iOS.

The phones have previously been available in Germany.

There is no indication that Greece will serve as a route in for Firefox to other European countries and Mozilla is wary of the much more competitive and highly penetrated countries. ®