Mozilla’s Boot to Gecko project has come a long way in just under a year — what began with the idea of building a mobile operating system based on open web standards like HTML5 has led to a full-fledged product being prepared for a commercial launch in the coming months.

What’s more, Mozilla has just confirmed that their HTML5-friendly mobile ecosystem now has the support of a handful of new carrier and hardware partners, not to mention a new name. The project has been referred to as Boot to Gecko since it was first revealed last July, but Mozilla has officially rechristened the product Firefox OS.

Spain-based Telefonica was the first network operator to link up with Mozilla earlier this year, and today it’s joined by Sprint, Deutsche Telekom, Smart, Telecom Italia, and Telenor. Meanwhile, the project has also caught the attention of Chinese hardware manufacturers ZTE and TCL (which is perhaps best known for their Alcatel-branded phones) who have committed to creating the first Firefox OS handsets.

Considering the device portfolios that these two companies bring to the table, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to hear that Firefox OS has been optimized for entry-level smartphones. Sadly, neither company has offered up specifics about the devices they’ll be producing, though Mozilla notes that they will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors. Still, it’ll be interesting to see how the entrance of another open-source operating system geared toward the low end will affect more entrenched players like Google’s Android, especially since a considerable chunk of Android’s growth can be attributed to their prominence in that segment.

Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs confirmed this past April that the first Firefox OS devices would make their official debut in Brazil, though at the time he stated that the hardware would be on store shelves either by the end of the year or in early 2013. The issue seems to have been ironed out over the past few months though, as Mozilla and Telefonica’s Brazilian subsidiary Vivo are indeed looking to launch their first handsets come next year. Despite buy-in from carriers in the United States, Germany, Italy, and the Philippines, there’s still no word on when Firefox OS will make its way to other locales.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The FT reports that Google, Intel and Sony will announce a “significant breakthrough into consumer electronics and the broadcast industry” later this week with the launch of a so-called “Smart TV” platform.

In case that sounds familiar, that’s because Bloomberg and the WSJ reported as much on April 29, apart from the apparent name of the Web TV platform that would be making its debut at Google I/O.

Google’s developer conference will be held May 19 – 20 in San Francisco.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini last week at the company’s analyst meeting said that it was looking to boost use of Atom processors in the mobile and digital home device segments. The company stated that its latest chip, named Dragonpoint, offers better audio and video performance, wider and open software support and is cheaper than the competition.

France Telecom and Telecom Italia are said to be among the list of customers lined up to put the chips in set-top boxes.

According to the FT, Google is expected to call on its Android developer community this week to create custom applications for Sony, which is looking to web-enable its televisions and Blu-ray DVD players, and likely other manufacturers in the future.

We’ll see how it goes – Google has been looking to extend its reach to TVs since 2007.

Are you waiting for Google search, native support for YouTube videos and maybe even an iteration of the Chrome browser on your next TV screen? Or do you want them to make advances in the field just so Apple would wake up and maximize the potential of Apple TV?

Article courtesy of TechCrunch