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Mozilla discontinues Firefox OS handsets

Mozilla stops Firefox OS development
Mozilla discontinues Firefox OS
Less than five years after its debut as "Boot to Gecko," the Firefox OS project comes to a halt as Mozilla stops offering smartphones powered by it via carrier channels.

What started as "Boot to Gecko" back in 2011 became Firefox OS two years later. Unfortunately, Firefox OS handsets never managed to sell well enough to bring a significant share of the market under Mozilla's control. While handsets like ZTE Open C are still interesting enough for those looking to get a basic smartphone that costs well under $100 USD unlocked, it looks like the Firefox OS saga has ended - at least for mobile phones.

A few hours ago, Mozilla issued a full statement to TechCrunch, highlighting that they are proud of the benefits Firefox OS added to the Web platform, proving the flexibility of the Web and "scaling from low-end smartphones all the way up to HD TVs." The sad part is they "weren’t able to offer the best user experience possible" and decided to stop offering Firefox OS handsets via carrier channels.

While this means the end for Firefox OS smartphones, other devices that run it might show up in the future and keep this project's legacy alive. Mozilla's SVP of Connected Devices Ari Jaaksi concluded its statement by saying "We’ll share more on our work and new experiments across connected devices soon." As it appears, there is still hope for Firefox OS. We will get back to it once new info shows up, so stay tuned.

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Codrut Nistor, 2015-12- 9 (Update: 2015-12- 9)