By John Paczkowski – All Things D

Mozilla, the nonprofit foundation behind the Firefox browser, is bringing its engineering acumen to bear on a new mobile operating system, Firefox OS. And it plans to debut this year.

But when exactly does the company plan to launch it? And where? During his appearance at the opening of our D: Dive Into Mobile conference on Monday, Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs said the company is planning a first-wave rollout of the OS that will begin in just a few months.

“We plan to launch in five countries in June and 11 more by the end of the year,” Kovacs said. “We plan to hit Venezuela, Poland, Brazil, Portugal and Spain. … We’ll hit the U.S. in 2014.”

Why target those markets and not bigger ones like the United States?

… read more in All Things D