Mozilla has given up on smartphones. The company today announced it has shut down development of Firefox OS for phone after just two years on the market.
The company made the announcement during a developer event earlier today. TechCrunch recieved a statement from Mozilla:
“We are proud of the benefits Firefox OS added to the Web platform and will continue to experiment with the user experience across connected devices. We will build everything we do as a genuine open source project, focused on user experience first and build tools to enable the ecosystem to grow.
Firefox OS proved the flexibility of the Web, scaling from low-end smartphones all the way up to HD TVs. However, we weren’t able to offer the best user experience possible and so we will stop offering Firefox OS smartphones through carrier channels.
We’ll share more on our work and new experiments across connected devices soon.”
Given Firefox’s internet heritage, the OS pretty much only ran Web apps. The company also focused on inexpensive devices in developing regions, but the platform simply never saw the adoption Mozilla was likely hoping for. There were reports the OS would eventually run native Android apps, but that never came to fruition.
Instead, it appears the company will focus on using the OS for the Internet of Things and other devices. We’ve contacted Mozilla for more information and will update this post when we hear back.
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➤ Mozilla Will Stop Developing And Selling Firefox OS Smartphones [TechCrunch]
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