Firefox OS

At this year's installment of Mobile World Congress (MWC), held Feb. 25-28 in Barcelona, Spain, it was clear that the mobile ecosystem is moving forward. In 2012, we wrote about how the world's largest mobility trade show demonstrated the growing importance of devices and all things mobile in consumers' lives. If that was the case last year, the 2013 show proved that we're into a new stage in the era of mobility.

BARCELONA, Spain--While Mozilla's Mitchell Baker blasted the dominating platforms--Android and iOS--earlier this week during an evening keynote, the company has stated it isn't trying to replace them.

BARCELONA, Spain--Two major trends in the wireless industry appear to be converging. On one hand, operators continue to struggle with over-the-top players like Google, Viber, Facebook Messenger and Skype cutting into their voice and messaging revenues. On the other hand, operators have quietly been inking deals with content providers in order to offer cheap or free access to specific services, a practice some have dubbed the toll-free data model. Now, it seems some companies are hoping toll-free data models can put wireless carriers back in the game and give them some leverage against the OTT tide.

BARCELONA, Spain--Mozilla formally took the wraps off its Firefox OS here ahead of the start of Mobile World Congress, assembling an array of carrier and device partners as part of a push to break through the clutter of the smartphone race.

While the IT industry applauded the launch announcements for a Firefox Phone by ZTE, Alcatel, LG and Huawei at Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona, Spain, this week, developers have already been talking about how Mozilla's operating system and device effort will change the app world.

Mozilla is rolling out preview phones running its forthcoming Firefox mobile operating system, enabling developers to test drive the HTML5-based OS prior to its commercial rollout.