Firefox OS, an upstart smartphone operating system aimed at challenging the Apple and Google duopoly, will power a new category of $25 smartphones for developing countries, the California-based nonprofit Mozilla Foundation said Sunday. Mozilla sought to show off the success of its system, launched a year ago to prise open a market in which Google's Android was at the heart of 78.4 percent of all smartphones sold last year and Apple's iOS in another 15.6 percent, according to figures from technology research house Gartner Inc. On the eve of the opening on Monday of the four-day Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Mozilla announced the commercial launch of seven new devices using Firefox OS such as Chinese handset maker ZTE's smartphones Open C and Open II, and a range of Alcatel OneTouch devices including a tablet.



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