Telefónica working with Mozilla to build open Web-centric smartphone

Mozilla announced that it has partnered with mobile network operator Telefónica to deliver a complete mobile operating system built around standards-based Web technologies.

They plan to bring the platform to market later this year on a prototype device that they are developing in collaboration with Qualcomm. The new operating system, which is called the Open Web Devices (OWD) platform, is based on Mozilla's Boot2Gecko (B2G) project. Mozilla launched B2G last year with the aim of building a Linux-based mobile computing environment with an application stack that runs entirely in Gecko, the HTML rendering engine that is used in the Firefox Web browser.

According to a statement from Mozilla, Telefónica was already evaluating the feasibility of creating its own Web-centric mobile platform when the B2G project was first announced. Telefónica subsequently decided to bring its ideas to B2G and join Mozilla in a cooperative development effort.