(Image Source: Mozilla ) BY CHRISTIAN BRYANT An Apple, an Android, and now a fox — heavy hitters Google and Apple will soon be making way for yet another mobile phone operating system. Non-profit software community Mozilla launched its new Firefox OS for mobile devices Sunday, essentially playing its hand against the two companies with the largest global market share in terms of smartphones. Mozilla is offering the Firefox OS for free. The company is partnering with 18 wireless carriers and four handset manufacturers to start shipping phones as early as this summer. The design is one smartphone users have seen before, but the new Firefox OS features will be sure to shake things up in the marketplace. CNN reports “ The new software is built on open Web standards and is capable of operating on much less sophisticated devices than many existing smartphones...” Think cheap phones in emerging markets. Not only that, but development language HTML5 is a large part of the software. According to the Wall Street Journal ... “The theory is that there are many more people familiar with the relatively simple chore of making Web pages than the developers who know how to write programs for specific mobile operating systems. In other words, Mozilla doesn’t have to convince programmers to learn yet another entirely new development scheme...” Forbes cites Mozilla Foundation estimates which puts the number of HTML developers in the millions compared to hundreds of thousands of Android and iOS developers. Initial appeal for the phone ranged from “unspectacular” , to... [via CNET] ...just “meh.” A writer for PCMag questions the open-for-all operating system, saying carriers might end up being the bullies when it comes to pricing. “This is an OS that carriers can completely own and customize... freedom without rules, can easily devolve into the rule of the strong over the weak through whichever levers of power they have at their disposal: in the case of carriers, they own the infrastructure, so they'll make us pay every way they can.” CNN reports the first wave of Firefox OS devices will go on sale in Brazil, Colombia, Hungary, Mexico, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Spain and Venezuela this Summer. U.S. consumers can expect Firefox OS devices by 2014.