Mozilla to Sell $25 Smartphones in India and Indonesia

June 16, 2014 Leave a comment

Jun 11, 2014

Mozilla to Sell $25 Smartphones in India and Indonesia

LORRAINE LUK

SHANGHAI—Smartphones as cheap as $25 powered by Mozilla Corp.’s software will be available in India and Indonesia later this year, an executive said.

Mozilla has been pitching its Firefox mobile operating system for low-cost smartphones in emerging markets as an alternative to Google Inc.’s Android and iOS from Apple Inc. through partnerships with major handset vendors, carriers and assemblers since July.

The U. S-based company has collaborated with four handset makers such as ZTE Corp.000063.SZ +1.32% , LG Electronics Co. 066570.SE +0.13% and five wireless carriers including Telefonica SA, TEF.MC -0.16% Deutsche Telekom AG DTE.XE -0.59% ,America Movil SAB AMX.MX -0.30% to launch five Firefox-powered smartphones in Europe and Latin America so far.

But the price for these smartphones are above US$60 and are still too expensive for most consumers in India and other Southeast Asian countries, Mozilla Chief Operating Officer Gong Li said in an interview on the sidelines of the Mobile Asia Expo.

“One U.S. dollar means a lot of things to consumers in emerging countries. It’s difficult to sell smartphones that cost more than US$50 in those markets,” he said.

To tap the next billion first-time smartphone users, Mozilla is collaborating with Chinese chip maker Spreadtrum Communications Inc. to unveil a low-cost chipset that enables smartphones to be priced at $25 this year.

“With a $25 price tag, there is no price gap between a smartphone and a feature phone. This attractive price point would help motivate feature phone users to switch to smartphones,” said Mr. Gong.

 

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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