Hon Hai-owned Foxconn and Mozilla-owned Firefox are teaming up to create the world’s first tablet to run on the Firefox OS.
The event will go down on June 3, just ahead of the Computex showcase.
Foxconn and Mozilla are being tight-lipped about the device, which analysts believe is a new tablet device and not the company’s expected smartphone.
Speaking to Focus Taiwan an industry insider says the device is “likely to be a tablet” although that news has not yet been confirmed.
Moving towards a new hand in the tablet market is a smart move for Foxconn. As reported yesterday, Foxconn watched in Q1 2013 at its revenue fell by 19 percent. With revenues down during certain lulls in partner production Foxconn is believed to be eyeing the accessories market and new device manufacturing partnerships. Adding new products to its arsenal would allow Hon Hai to avoid lulls in revenue as Apple prepares to ship the next generation iPhone and iPad’s from its ever growing collection of mobile devices.
It’s still unclear at this time if the new tablet-based device will be Foxconn or Mozilla branded and what features it will showcase.
The tablet if real could be a low-cost alternative to iPad and Android-tablets. Firefox OS is built on an HTML5 infrastructure that is meant to help keep costs down for buyers in developing countries.
Developer devices from Geeksphone of Spain have started shipping and other partners working with the Firefox OS include LG, ZTE, and Alcatel.