Mozilla kills Firefox OS for smartphones

Mozilla Foundation recently announced that it has killed the Firefox OS for smartphones. This OS for smartphones had created a buzz when it was launched, and was touted as an alternative to Android, giving more freedom to users. However, the OS couldn’t get the desired acceptance amongst users, despite getting support from several OEMs from different parts of the world. Hence, the open source operating system maker has decided to kill it.

According to various online reports, Denelle Dixon-Thayer, chief legal and business officer at Mozilla stated, “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 on smartphones through carrier channels. We’ll share more on our work and new experiments across connected devices soon,” he said.

Firefox OS first came into being as a project called Boot2Gecko, which brought the idea of a mobile operating system that delivers applications using the Web. Unfortunately, despite the idea being innovative, it did not convert into a good business proposition for Mozilla. Despite several attempts, Mozilla failed to penetrate the mobile landscape dominated by Android and iOS. Other operating systems, including Windows, Blackberry, Tizen and Ubuntu, are also making an effort to enter this space, but their volumes too, as of now, are very low.