Mozilla's ambitious Boot to Gecko (B2G) operating system project has finally gone to business. It provides a functional, open-source, cheaper alternative to the likes of Apple iOS, Android, and Windows Mobile, which its makers claim can reduce cost of manufacture of devices such as smartphones and tablets by 10 percent (a significant amount). B2G uses applications coded using web-standards, taking advantage of the rich feature-set of HTML5. It's only a matter of time before smartphone and tablet manufacturers of all shapes and sizes take interest in this new OS built by a credible source, Mozilla. The guys behind Firefox.

Here are the first screenshots of Mozilla's first operating system (OS). It's not a PC OS, but a significant feat for an organization as collaborated as Mozilla. News of Mozilla working on its own OS first surfaced in July 2011, it was then interpreted as a "boot-to-web" OS along the lines of Google's Chrome OS. It now appears Boot-to-Gecko's primary focus is on the portable computing market, primarily tablets and smartphones, as a possible 100% royalty-free option to manufacturers. In the screenshots, the phone dialer and main menu are pictured. Boot-to-Gecko will be detailed by Mozilla's CTO at the Mobile Web Congress.