Firefox OS phones are still struggling to impress users

May 24, 2015 08:43 GMT  ·  By

A year ago Mozilla had big plans for the low-end smartphone market. It wanted to revolutionize it by bringing out a $25 / €22 smartphone with Firefox OS onboard.

The company promised the handset will arrive by the end of 2014 in countries like Indonesia and India, but that plan failed to materialize. And now a report coming out of CNET reveals that the $25 / €22 Firefox OS smartphone will never become a reality.

Last year Mozilla even showed off a prototype of the said device. The phone had a 3.5-inch display with 320 x 480 pixels, a 1GHz single core Spreadtrum SC8621 processor, a 2MP camera and Wi-Fi support.

An intercepted email from Mozilla’s CEO Chris Beard to employees revealed that the company just hasn’t seen enough traction for a $25 / €23 phone. So basically the plans for building for such an affordable device are being canned for good.

Mozilla will continue to launch Firefox OS phones

Even if a super affordable phone with Firefox OS won’t make it out on the market anymore, Mozilla says Firefox OS is still an important part in their mobile strategy. The company is now planning to develop “phones and connected device that people want to buy because of the experience, not simply the price.”

So basically Mozilla will focus on improving Firefox OS, rather than trying to make one of the cheapest phones on the market. After all, user experience is a highly important aspect when purchasing a phone.

One way Mozilla might go about doing that is making Firefox OS more attractive and more open. The company is actually thinking about “implementing Android app compatibility”. The process would start off slowly with only “key apps” making the first cut. Slowly Mozilla could move on to offering access to more Android applications.

Mozilla’s strategy seems to be akin to Samsung’s. The Korean tech giant develops its own, in-house Tizen OS which is currently powering the Z1 smartphone.

Tizen does not officially support Android apps, but thanks to OpenMobile’s Application Compatibility Layer, a tool which allows Android apps to run on non-Android devices, users can enjoy some of the biggest Google Play hits on their Tizen device.