It’s a name you may remember from the golden days of VHS camcorders and portable cassette players; Panasonic. While the company hasn’t gone anywhere in the 20 or so years since its heyday, it hasn’t made a big splash in the tablet or smartphone market in the west, announcing last year that it was dropping out of the mobile device business. Panasonic has been playing it safe by pumping out televisions and other home theater equipment.
Panasonic is upping its smart TV game by announcing today a partnership with Mozilla which will bring Firefox OS powered smart TVs to the market. The partnership will also serve as a vehicle for the proliferation of the open source Firefox OS to other connected home devices.
The mobile Firefox OS is currently running on a few entry-level smartphones around the world, mostly in the hands of developers who are currently working hard to breathe life into the fledgling OS. We have yet to see Firefox OS running on a TV or smart box.
“Mozilla and Panasonic will work together to promote Firefox OS and its open ecosystem. This development aims to deliver more expansive access into smart TVs by leveraging the HTML5 and Web technologies already prevalent on PCs, smartphones and tablets, to offer consumers more personalized and optimized access to Web and broadcasting content and Web services.”
The lightweight OS will go up against a few other mobile OSs turned smart TV such as LG’s WebOS and Android. Depending on the amount and quality of the apps for Firefox OS, Panasonic’s Firefox OS powered smart TVs could be pretty amazing.
What are your thoughts on Mozilla’s Firefox OS? Are you into the idea of it powering your living room experience? Let us know in the comments.
via: TechCrunch