Mozilla Kills Firefox OS for Smartphones

Mozilla during its company's developer event in Orlando on Wednesday announced that it is killing its smartphone operating system, Firefox OS. The company said it will "stop offering Firefox OS smartphones through carrier channels." However, the OS will still be experimented for other connected devices and for Internet of Things.

The company's decision came as Mozilla was not "able to offer the best user experience possible" in its Firefox OS on smartphones, according to Ari Jaaksi, Mozilla's SVP of Connected Devices, who was quoted in a report by TechCrunch. "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," Jaaksi added.

Mozilla's Firefox OS was introduced in 2013 with the launch of the GeeksPhone Keon and Peak. Over time it came with several low-budget smartphones such as Spice Fire One Mi-FX 2, Alcatel OneTouch Fire C, Alcatel Orange Klif, Intex Cloud FX, Firefox U105, and others. The OS even came with LG Fx0, the high-end smartphone with transparent body, and to some HD TVs as well but was not able to generate much sales and revenue for the company. It ran Web-based apps and barely featured any native apps.

According to a research report from last month, Mozilla's Firefox OS, apart from BlackBerry, showed a decline in smartphone platform market share. Mozilla in November also introduced a developer preview of its Firefox OS that can be installed on Android devices as an app. Mozilla on Wednesday launched Focus by Firefox, a content-blocking app for iOS devices.