Telefonica tells investors it is betting big on #OpenWebDevice

Totally cool presentation at the Telefonica Digital investors conference where they outline their commitment to the Firefox OS phone (skip to the presentation by Carlos Domingo)

The rationale is pretty simple:

1) Great performance on a cheaper device: Price-sensitive markets finally get the smartphone they deserve

2) Apps Apps Apps: There are millions of web developers worldwide looking to get on mobile… OpenWebDevice is the platform

3) TEF’s two markets are Europe and LatAm; it has more customers in LatAm but sells more smartphones in Europe. Lots of room for smartphone growth in LatAm

4) Bring innovation to mobile:  Smartphone market is dominated by IOS and Android; in LatAm Google has a virtual monopoly. TEF needs someone to shake up the market and Mozilla has a pretty good reputation as a market-shaker (right, MSFT??)

5) See ya later, fragmentation: What version of Android are you writing for? Who cares… write for the web and you’re on every device!

But hey, don’t just take Telefonica’s word for it! There are other carriers lining up as well:

Telefonica has teamed up with Mozilla Corp., the company whose Firefox program challenged the dominance of Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)’s Web browser. This week, six additional companies, including Germany’s Deutsche Telekom AG (DTE) and Sprint Nextel Corp. (S), said they will use the platform in other countries, such as Poland. While Android is free, operators currently must accept that the biggest search engine controls the software code and makes advertising money from pushing users to take its mapping, e-mail and search services