Verizon Wireless has become the first U.S. operator to join the LiMo Foundation.

Mobile industry leaders Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics and Vodafone first launched the Linux Mobile Foundation in January 2007 as non-profit industry consortium dedicated to creating an open, hardware-independent, Linux-based operating system for mobile devices.

Verizon will fill the final seat on the LiMo board of directors joining the likes of ACCESS, Aplix, Azingo, LG Electronics, McAfee, Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Panasonic, Samsung Electronics, Texas Instruments, Verizon, Vodafone and Wind River.

Several other groups including Mozilla, SK Telecom, Infineon Technologies, Red Bend Software, Sagem Mobiles, SFR and Kvaleberg AS have also joined the group.

The news comes shortly after AT&T announced its support for Google’s Linux based platform, Android. T-Mobile and Sprint are also planning to support Android phones.

This announcement comes as a bit of a surprise seeing as how not too long ago, Verizon Wireless told Business Week that it planned on using Android but later said it had no solid plans to do so. According to rcrnews.com, Kyle Malady, Vice President of network at VZW has said the company will make LiMo’s platform its preferred operating system but if Android proves to be beneficial for Verizon’s customers then the company may use it.

“Certainly there might be a segment for them [OHA] and we will continue to watch that. If there comes to be a point where we see there’s benefit for our customers (by supporting Android), we could use that.”

According the the website, LiMo is "open to all vendors and service providers in the mobile communications marketplace, including device manufacturers, operators, chipset manufacturers, integrators and independent software vendors" and many company’s are supporters of both LiMo and Google’s OHA.