Is the Firefox Mobile Operating System a Droid Killer?

Neemias Santos Mazzoco, 29, is looking at phones at a São Paulo store for Vivo, a Brazilian carrier owned by Telefónica. He has a 2007-vintage Nokia. He ticks off the things he likes about it: “No one wants to steal this phone. It’s almost unbreakable, and the battery lasts for three days.” When it finally dies, he says, he’d consider an Alcatel OneTouch Fire, a smartphone that at 340 reais ($151) costs one-fifth as much as an iPhone 5C in the store. “I don’t have the courage to spend 1,500 reais on a phone,” he says. Unlike most smartphones, especially in emerging markets, the OneTouch Fire doesn’t run on Android, Google’s mobile operating system. It runs on Firefox.