Mozilla bids farewell to Firefox OS smartphones

There will be no more Firefox OS smartphones, as Mozilla has confirmed it will stop developing the smartphone operating system. But it plans to continue supporting it for other connected devices and Internet of Things (IoT) networks.

"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," said Ari Jaaksi, Mozilla's senior vice president of connected devices, in the organisation's official blog, after an announcement was made at company's developer event in Orlando.

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

Mozilla first announced the global rollout of Firefox OS in February 2013. Following that, in July, it released the first wave of Firefox OS smartphones coming from manufacturing partners such as Alcatel, LG and ZTE, aiming at consumers in countries including Brazil, Colombia, Hungary, Mexico, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Spain and Venezuela.

The handsets are the first to completely powered by web technologies, without any native apps. Despite carrying a lower price tag, the sales of the Firefox OS smartphones were pretty poor, with the low-end market segment was already occupied with the budget models coming from rivals.

The company, however, says that: "We are excited about the challenges and opportunities ahead of us. We believe that the Web can be the right platform for this future of connected devices and we can't wait to share more with everyone soon."