Another big news story from Barcelona was about Mozilla entering the OS wars.
Mozilla is not alone in believing that other systems can thrive. In October Microsoft, which has never had more than a minuscule share of the phone business, brought forth Windows Phone 8. Most Windows smartphones are made by Finland’s Nokia, which dropped its own plans for a new system when it threw in its lot with the American software giant. BlackBerry, a Canadian company formerly called Research In Motion, hopes to recover lost glories with BlackBerry 10, which appeared in January after much delay.
Also competing are Sailfish, developed by Jolla, a Finnish firm that took up work abandoned by Nokia; and Ubuntu, created by Canonical, a British software company, plus other firms and an army of volunteers. Even Samsung is working on another operating system, called Tizen, with Intel, a big semiconductor company that has made little progress in the mobile world. Although it is by far the biggest maker of Android smartphones—and the only one that makes much profit from them—Samsung feels the need to hedge its bets.
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