Mozilla today announced that new launches of Firefox OS smartphones will begin soon with more devices and in more markets around the world. This news follows just weeks after the launches of the first Firefox OS smartphones, the ALCATEL ONE TOUCH Fire and the ZTE Open. Firefox OS phones are currently available from Telefonica in Spain, Colombia and Venezuela and Deutsche Telekom in Poland. Individual partners will announce specifics about upcoming launches in each market.

"The positive market reception of the first Firefox OS smartphones demonstrates that people like the user experience and openness we're building with Firefox OS," said Jay Sullivan, Mozilla Chief Operating Officer. "We continue to enhance Firefox OS to deliver the best experience for the many people around the world buying their first smartphones. We are looking forward to seeing the response to the next round of Firefox OS launches."

Telenor also confirmed plans to launch Firefox OS phones in Hungary, Serbia and Montenegro before the end of the year.

New Firefox OS phones will have the latest version of Firefox OS (1.1), which includes many performance improvements and new features like MMS messaging. Existing Firefox OS users will be upgraded to the latest version soon.

Along with speed improvements like smoother scrolling and faster app loading, a host of those missing pieces have been added, according to a blog post by Chris Lee, director of the Firefox OS product:

- MMS support: you can send and receive pictures, audio and video files via MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service).
- Push Notifications API: developers can make use of push to deliver timely notifications to apps and reduce overall battery consumption. - Adaptive app search is now front and center on the home screen, making it easier and faster to find the content you want.

- Contact Management enhancements:

Gmail and Hotmail contact import: it?s now even easier to get your contacts onto a Firefox OS phone. Mozilla has now added the ability to import your existing contacts from either Gmail or Hotmail, in addition to the existing Facebook or SIM card import options.

Add to contacts: You can easily add any phone number or e-mail address to your contacts that is listed in your call log, SMS messages or e-mail. Simply long tap the relevant information to directly create a new contact or add information to existing contacts.

Dialer suggestions: Start entering phone numbers or names into the Dialer to quickly find a specific contact.

- Performance improvements: Experience faster application load times and smoother scrolling
- Firefox browser downloads: Save images, audio and video from the browser with ease
- Keyboard improvements: Auto correction fixes words that you accidentally misspell.

- E-Mail enhancements:

Draft Mode: Automatically save in-progress e-mails offline so you can finish and send them later.

Download audio and video attachments: Save audio and video e-mail attachments in addition to image files to your gallery.

Sending image attachments: Attach and send Gallery images directly within the e-mail application.

- Music Search: Finding a favorite song is easy with the new music search functionality, simply swipe down from the top of the Music app to reveal a search bar and find music by artist, album or song title.

- Calendar enhancements:

Direct event creation: Just tap on the desired time slot to create a new calendar event.

Calendar event reminders: Set reminders to be notified of calendar events.

- More than 15 languages supported.

This Firefox OS update will be available for current users and on developer phones soon.