Mozilla bids good bye to Firefox OS smartphones

Mozilla has officially announced that will stop building and shipping Firefox OS smartphones. The experience gathered while working on Firefox OS will be harnessed while working on “other connected devices” and IoT networks.

Mozilla in partnership with Spice and Intex had launched two Firefox OS smartphones last September. Despite being the cheapest smartphones in the Indian market, these failed to excite consumers. Brands like Zen and Alcatel Onetouch later, had joined the efforts to attract consumers to use Firefox phones, but in vain.

Mozilla Senior Vice President Ari Jaaksi in a blog post said, “Everything is connected around us. This revolution has already started and it will be bigger than previous technology revolutions, including the mobile smartphone revolution. Internet of Things, as many call it today, will fundamentally affect all of us.

We will prototype this future starting right now using technologies developed as part of the Firefox OS project to give us a kick start. We will make space for this exploration by stopping our work to build and ship smartphones through carrier partners.

We will explore and prototype new use cases in the world of connected devices as an open source project with a clear focus on the user benefit and experience.”