How Firefox OS Could Sneak Into The Smartphone Chicken Coop

With the mobile industry now so heavily dominated by Android and iOS, is there possibly room for another contender? That remains to be seen, of course, but Firefox OS has several advantages to set it apart. Not only is it open source and made by freedom-defending Mozilla -- maker of the Firefox browser -- but it's also built on a foundation of cross-platform HTML5.

...Like Android, the Firefox OS mobile operating system is based on Linux. A highly adaptable markup language called HTML5, however, is its biggest differentiating feature. Without getting too technical, HTML5 can be highly suitable for use across screens and consequently across devices, partly because it has scalable vector graphics. It is also multimedia-friendly, handles cross-browser errors well and doesn't need plug-ins.

Herein, arguably, lies Firefox OS's potential killer advantage: It's a predominantly HTML5-developed ecosystem. For anyone choosing to develop in HTML5, it becomes one-language-cheap-and-easy to simply shunt an app over to Firefox's marketplace -- even if Firefox OS is a minor player that wouldn't ordinarily get a look-in. Equally important for Firefox Marketplace, the apps stay updated because it's easy -- the developer is already updating for other platforms anyway...