Mozilla, the corporation known for its Firefox Web browser, has struggled to make a dent in the smartphone industry with its Firefox OS, so it has decided to take the operating system to bigger screens instead.
On Thursday, Mozilla announced in a blog post that its partnership with Panasonic is finally yielding fruit in the form of half a dozen new smart TVs that will run on Firefox OS. These 4K smart TVs, which were introduced to the world via the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year, including Panasonic's curved 65-inch 4K TV, will feature a more "user-friendly and customizable" user interface, says Panasonic's director of its TV business Masahiro Shinada.
Neither Mozilla nor Panasonic announced pricing for the six new smart TV models, but a quick search around the Web by The Verge has turned out the 40-inch CX680 model selling for £656.87 or around $1,033, and the 50-inch Viera CX700 selling for £999, or $1,571. Prices for the CR850, CR730, CX800 and the CX750 have yet to be announced.
Mozilla launched its operating system in 2013 with the intent of putting it in smartphones in an effort to break down the closed systems of iOS and Android. However, only a handful of devices, mostly low-end smartphones from Huawei, ZTE and Alcatel run on Firefox OS. Research firm Gartner says out of the 1.2 billion smartphones shipped last year, only two million units running on Mozilla's platform were sold.
However, Mozilla believes that Firefox OS' support for HTML5, Javascript and other open Web platforms can help attract developers to build apps for the platform, as it allows them to easily port their apps over to other operating systems, thus attracting more users with more services.
"With Firefox and Firefox OS powered devices, users can enjoy a custom and connected Web experience and take their favorite content (apps, videos, photos, websites) across devices without being locked into one proprietary ecosystem or brand," says Mozilla chief technical officer Andreas Gal.
The Firefox OS for TV is colorful, flat and easy to navigate. Users can download their favorite apps from the Firefox OS app marketplace, while plenty of video-on-demand services, including Netflix, Amazon Instant Video and YouTube, already come pre-installed. From there, users can pin their favorite apps and channels to the bottom of the home screen for fast access, while apps and, eventually, smart home devices, will pop up notifications on the lower right. The TVs will also come pre-loaded with the Firefox browser, so users can sit in front of their TVs for some big-screen Web surfing.
The new TVs will be available initially in Europe before they launch worldwide "in the coming months."
Photo: Mozilla in Europe | Flickr
