Mozilla extends its Asia presence with new office in Taiwan

Open source software development organisation Mozilla has expanded its presence in Asia after launching an office in Taiwan.

Mozilla, whose Firefox browser enjoys a 26.7 market share worldwide, will begin working with local developers and teams to further develop its open source services to provide alternative solutions to those of Microsoft, Apple and others.

Reports suggest that the organisation could hire as many as 40 new developers, although the number could be lower going on the post Li Gong, Chairman and CEO of Mozilla Li Gong, wrote on his blog.

Today we announced (at a press event held in Taipei) that Mozilla will set up shop in Taipei in the coming weeks. We are now recruiting for dozens of highly qualified engineers to work on our exciting B2G and Mobile projects. Come join us!

Mozilla’s launch in Taiwan takes its reach in Asia Pacific to four offices – Tokyo, Auckland, Beijing and Taiwan – although including its community sites the organisation covers 12 markets across the region. The organisation has had a presence in the country through MozTW, the Mozilla community which has been active in the Chinese territory since 2002.

Mozilla uses local relationships and networking to develop its products and the community around them in a manner that is quite unlike any of its rivals. While it doesn’t track specific statistics, Gen Kanai, the organisation’s Director of Asia Business Management, recently told e27 that Mozilla has “hundreds of active contributors and thousands of casual contributors” in Asia.

Firefox is the second most used browser in Asia, with an estimated 26 percent of the region’s market share, although Google’s Chrome browser is fast catching it. As of last year, Firefox enjoys an impressive 70 percent market share in Indonesia which makes the country its biggest user anywhere in the world.

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Mozilla’s arrival in the country comes hot on heels of Japanese VC firm CyberAgent. The company opened an office last week and announced it would provide $2 million in investment funding for two local startups.

Hat tip to CQD for providing further information about the MozTW community