Mozilla Expands Its Firefox OS Partners, Platforms

Besides VIA partnering with Mozilla for Firefox OS support, which is already controversial given VIA's notorious reputation among Linux enthusiasts for their failed open-source efforts of the past, Mozilla has also announced new partnerships at CES and outlooks for bringing Firefox OS to new platforms.

Panasonic and Mozilla announced on Monday they too are hooking up for Firefox OS work. Panasonic is interested in shipping Smart TVs with Firefox OS and to drive HTML5 and Web technologies to TVs. This will be Mozilla's first entrance into their Linux-based open-source OS on TVs.

Mozilla and ZTE have also expanded their Firefox OS product line. ZTE was the first to ship a Firefox OS phone and within European and Latin American markets the phone is exceeding expectations. In 2014 there will be new higher-end ZTE Firefox OS phones with dual-core options, including the Open C and Open II.

Last but not least there's a new Firefox OS contribution program to accelerate development of the mobile Linux platform. Dedicated contributors to Firefox OS will receive resources and reference hardware for speeding up development.

More details on these latest Firefox OS initiatives can be found from the Mozilla blog.