Spain’s Telefonica has become the latest major operator to pledge to support MeeGo, the Linux-based mobile platform being created by Nokia and Intel. In a statement, the operator group said it will use MeeGo to deliver products such as “smartphones, netbooks, tablets, and internet connected TVs” across its global footprint, which currently serves around 265 million customers in 25 countries under the Movistar and O2 mobile brands. Telefonica said it will work with device manufacturers, application developers and service providers to explore ways of leveraging the MeeGo capabilities into their service offerings.

Announced at the GSMA Mobile World Congress earlier this year, MeeGo combines Intel’s Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo open source projects into one Linux-based software platform hosted by the Linux Foundation. The project has already received backing from France Telecom’s Orange as well as numerous OEMs and application developers. Nokia and Intel released the first MeeGo code – version 1.0 – to developers last week. This first version concerns only netbooks, but MeeGo code for touch-based handsets, tablets, and in-car systems is due later this month. The platform is the latest open-source mobile operating system to take on Google’s Android, which is also Linux-based.