MTN has become the first operator in South Africa to launch a smartphone running Mozilla’s open-source and Web-based Firefox OS operating system.

The smartphone, the Alcatel OneTouch Fire E, works in four of South Africa’s official languages, English, Afrikaans, Zulu or Xhosa, with MTN promising to add additional language support in future versions of the device.

Firefox OS is developed by the same nonprofit organisation responsible for the popular Firefox Web browser and Thunderbird e-mail client.

Applications are build on HTML5 using open standards. The software competes with systems such as Google’s Android, Apple’s iOS and Microsoft’s Windows Phone.

Telefónica launched the first commercial Firefox OS phone, made by ZTE, in Spain in mid-2012. Devices running the operating system are now available from more than a dozen operators around the world.