China-based ZTE has revealed plans for second-generation Firefox OS phones to be available in the US in the first half of 2014. Mozilla meanwhile has posted more videos to help and encourage developers to produce apps for its HTML5-based platform.

In an interview with journalists including IDG's Michael Kan at Expo Comm China 2013, ZTE's Executive VP He Shiyou said that the new handset would have a larger display than its predecessor, a dual-core processor, a "revamped user experience" bit would still retain a low price.

Commenting on the fact that it has sold around 100,000 of its original Firefox OS phone, the ZTE Open, He Shiyou said:

"On the whole, the sales have been pretty good, especially on eBay and with third-party retailers. The demand has exceeded supply, but we also purposely did not want this first generation product to have a large scale."

He seemed optimistic about the future the web-based Firefox operating system:

"The Firefox OS is still new, and it will bring an entirely different user experience.

These Web-based OSes will develop fast, particularly because of 4G LTE technology. Higher-speed networks means that HTML5-based apps can load quickly on phones, removing the need to download and install native apps. In the future, the app store business model will be no more"

As I Programmer's Mike James explained recently, Firefox OS is the browser-based operating system that will give you access to the mobile hardware without an additional framework - other than some new JavaScript APIs. What this means is that you can write a "native" phone app using nothing but HTM5, CSS and JavaScript. And given that Firefox OS is open and free to all it should provide a new, easy-to-use and risk-free platform to develop for. All it needs is widespread availability and support. 

Mozilla has just posted the sixth video in a series Firefox OS: the platform HTML5 deserves in which Mozilla's Principal Evangelist Chris Heilmann, interviews others who can provide pointers to help developers start writing, and marketing, HTML5 apps using the Firefox Marketplace.

In this short episode the topics are Web Components and Mozilla's Brick Library and advice is provided by Mozilla's Senior HTML5 Engineer Matthew Claypotch:

An earlier one in the series Heimann discuss with Desigan Chinniah of the Firefox OS Business Development team how app distribution on Firefox OS is different to any other smartphone platform and the flexibility it offers developers in publishing their apps:

Another recent video from the Firefox OS team is a guide to using the Firefox OS simulator and accompanies a walkthrough provided on the Mozilla Developer Network:

If you are just starting to develop for Firefox OS keep up with our continuing tutorial series, Getting Started with Firefox OS.