Mozilla B2G Announced (A Web Centric Mobile OS)... ...

Mozilla yesterday announced its plans to develop an open source mobile operating system. The OS will be focused primarily on web-apps. Dubbed B2G , the OS will make use of HTML5 capabilities to deliver basic phone functionality via various APIs.

Mozilla will be using parts from Android to enable hardware acceleration. 

Mozilla’s plan with the OS is to provide :

New web APIs: build prototype APIs for exposing device and OS capabilities to content (Telephony, SMS, Camera, USB, Bluetooth, NFC, etc.)

Privilege model: making sure that these new capabilities are safely exposed to pages and applications

Booting: prototype a low-level substrate for an Android-compatible device

Applications: choose and port or build apps to prove out and prioritize the power of the system.

The User Interface is going to be entirely unique and will build an application stack around Gecko. The B2G project is still in the early stages so we shouldn’t expect any devices based on the OS to hit the market anytime soon.