Mozilla will no longer sell devices running the Firefox OS, it’s alternative operating system for mobile devices. The development of the OS continues but no more phones with Firefox OS will be sold. Mozilla announced the news during a developers conference.
Development of Firefox OS started in 2013 and should have become an alternative to the dominant iOS and Android mobile operating systems. Mozilla marketed it mainly as an experiment to see how a fully internet based OS would work out on the mobile devices market.
Besides some small manufacturers and LG there were hardly any other companies who released devices running on Firefox OS. Only in some third world countries the OS gained some market share because the free operating system could be run on cheap smartphones.
The main difference between Android and iOS is that Firefox is fully HTML5 based. This should have made it easy for web developers to create apps for the operating system but the OS suffered from the same problem as Windows Phone. Developers don’t make apps for operating systems that don’t have users. And users don’t want operating systems with hardly any apps.
Although the operating system will no longer be sold on mobile devices, its development will continue. Firefox OS is e.g. used on some Panasonic TVs and the OS can also be installed on selected smartphones who those interested in the OS.
Ceasing sales of Firefox OS based mobile devices is part of a new strategy of Mozilla who wants to focus on its main products, such as the Firefox browser.
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