BARCELONA, Spain ― Another war is stirring over new mobile operating systems, and this time, it is being staged by handset makers and chipmakers as well as mobile carriers around the world.

The newest incoming mobile platforms introduced at this year’s Mobile World Congress were Tizen and Firefox, both strongly supported by global and local firms like Samsung and LG Electronics, Intel, Mozilla and Qualcomm.

Telecoms including KT, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Telefonica, China Unicom and Sprint are also backing the initiative, while agreeing that more mobile operating systems are needed than the two dominant platforms ― Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS.

“We’re driving for openness of the platform,” said Christopher Croteau, Tizen board member and managing director of platform and business management at Intel. “It expands the market for devices and makes money through the growth of the marketplace.”

Chipmakers, device manufacturers and mobile carriers have come together to launch open source and Web-based platforms in a shift away from the current dominant players, especially Google. They say the U.S.-based software giant is now abusing its power when it comes to partnerships and businesses as it has taken up a large portion of the global smartphone industry.

On Tuesday, Intel and Samsung Electronics announced the launch of the open source, standards-based platform called Tizen at an event held on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress, the world’s largest mobile trade show.

Intel, Samsung, Orange and NTT DoCoMo are among the operators that are leading the move with the players planning to launch gadgets running on the new OS this year, most likely in the latter half.

“There is freedom for us (operators) to create applications on top of the smartphone itself. If we select the good services only, we put on that only. So that means we can say this is suitable for usage. Also we can create any services on top … we can create our own stores,” said Kiyohito Nagata, chairman of Tizen Association and senior vice president of NTT DoCoMo.

Firefox is another Web-based platform that is supported by 17 mobile service operators, chipmaker Qualcomm and handset makers LG, ZTE and Huawei.

ZTE was the first to roll out a 3.5-inch smartphone running on the third-generation communications network dubbed ZTE Open at the show.

“Everyone could offer to improve the OS,” said Juan Perez-Bedmar, global technical manager at the terminal sales department at ZTE, who oversees Firefox OS handsets.

Equipped with a Qualcomm chip, the gadget is expected to launch in June and the pricing will be set at under $70, he said.

“It’s a way to make a breakthrough in the Android and Apple market,” said Perez-Bedmar.

LG is also planning to unveil a Firefox gadget within this year.

“If you ask whether we’re ready to adopt a new OS other than Google’s Android, the answer would be yes,” said Brian Kwon, senior vice president of Product Planning Center at LG. “It’s confirmed that LG is participating in the activation of a new mobile platform and it’s just a matter of what value the new OS will offer to our customers.”

Firefox takes up about one-fifth of the global Web-browsing market, following Google’s Chrome and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Telefonica, a mobile carrier that provides service in 25 countries, also announced last Monday that the first Firefox OS gadgets would be released in Brazil, Colombia, Spain and Venezuela this year and handset manufacturers like LG, TCL and ZTE would take part in the effort.

By Cho Ji-hyun, Korea Herald correspondent
(sharon@heraldcorp.com)