Mozilla on Wednesday admitted defeat in the smartphone race, confirming plans to halt the development of its Firefox OS.
"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," said Denelle Dixon-Thayer, Mozilla’s chief legal and business officer, in a statement sent to Total Telecom.
"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," she said.
Mozilla officially unveiled Firefox OS in July 2012. Based on the HTML5 Web-programming language, it was designed to run on low-cost hardware in a bid to make smartphones more affordable in emerging markets.
Mozilla announced no fewer than 18 operator partnerships with great fanfare at 2013’s Mobile World Congress. They included America Movil, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, and Telenor, among others.
However, with the price of smartphones powered by Google’s Android OS declining steeply, "Firefox OS never really stoo d a chance," said Radio Free Mobile founder Richard Windsor, in a research note, who added that its lack of scale made it impossible to compete with Android.
"Furthermore, its lack of an ecosystem meant that users could see no reason why they should buy it," he said.
Firefox OS is not the only struggling smartphone OS maker.
Finland’s Jolla in November filed for debt restructuring after its latest funding round was delayed. The company, which makes the Sailfish OS, said that a large number of staff would be temporarily laid off, casting doubt over the future of the company.
"I suspect that the smaller offerings are likely to continue failing unless someone can come up with a compelling differentiator," Windsor predicted.
