Report: Mozilla, Hon Hai Prep Firefox OS Tablet for June 3 Debut

Mozilla and Hon Hai have teamed up on a mobile device—rumored to be a tablet—running the new Firefox mobile operating system, a collaboration that could give the open source community a toehold in the market and build new business for the Taiwan manufacturer apart from its Apple (AAPL) iOS and Google (GOOG) Android manufacturing sales.

According to a Focus Taiwan report, Hon Hai and Mozilla have sent out press invitations to an event slated for June 3 to announce their partnership, introduce the Firefox OS and showcase the new device.

The non-profit Mozilla said at February’s Mobile World Congress that it was working with a sizeable list of manufacturers and telecom network operators, including Alcatel (ALU), America Movil (AMX), China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, LG Electronics, SingTel, Sprint (S) and ZTE to build and support the first Firefox OS-based mobile devices, powered by Qualcomm’s (QCOMM) mobile processors. Huawei is expected to jump on the bandwagon later this year.

The Firefox OS tablet, if it surfaces, won’t be the first mobile device in public view running the Mozilla mobile platform. In April, Mozilla began selling two smartphone models manufactured by a Spanish company called GeeksPhone running the Firefox OS, ostensibly to catch the attention of developers.

As for Hon Hai, Apple represents some 60 percent of the Taiwan company’s assembly business and, according to a Wall Street Journal report, the manufacturer may be seeking a buffer against declining iPhone and iPad sales.

Mozilla hasn’t been exactly standing still either. In April, Samsung said it is hooking up with Mozilla on a new browser engine for Android and the ARM architecture. The collaboration aims to produce a new browser called Servo, written in Mozilla’s new Rust “safe systems” programming language, intended to take advantage of faster, multicore, heterogeneous computing architectures. Samsung also plans to offer a high-end smartphone framed on the open source, Linux-based, Tizen operating system later this year.