FirefoxOS mobile operating system released

Mozilla, the maker of the Firefox web browser, announced the launch of the Firefox OS mobile operating system at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Sunday to challenge Google's and Apple's smartphone operating systems.

Mozilla announced that mobile devices with the Firefox OS operating system will be released after July of this year. The partners include Alcatel, LG and ZTE ZTE and Huawei. All devices will use Qualcomm-supplied processors.

The first batch of mobile devices will be available for sale in Brazil, Colombia, Hungary, Mexico, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Spain, and Venezuela.

In addition, according to Mozilla, 13 wireless service providers worldwide have announced support for Firefox OS, including Telefonica, China Unicom and America Movil.

Because Firefox's operating system is Web-based and open source, third-party developers don't need to share revenues with Apple or Google as they sell their Firefox OS mobile apps.

Unlike operating systems built by Google and Apple's proprietary technology, the Firefox OS's operating system uses the HTML5 standard to create Web services. This means that anyone familiar with Web programming can create applications for Firefox OS.