Mozilla has brought further clarity to the future of Firefox OS on smartphones today, with the news that development will cease after the release of version 2.6 of the operating system. The company has released the statement two months after Mozilla revealed that the web-focused Firefox OS platform would cease to be available for smartphones. Mozilla’s Foxfooding program, via which volunteers were invited to test Firefox OS builds and provide usage data, will now focus on “new product innovations” instead of improving the smartphone experience.
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“Therefore, we are announcing our plan to end-of-life support for smartphones after the Firefox OS 2.6 release”. Surprisingly, Firefox OS compatible apps will continue to be accepted into 2017 since the company have yet to decide a date for when they will stop accepting these apps in the Marketplace.
“…as we announced in December, the circumstances of multiple established operating systems and app ecosystems meant that we were playing catch-up, and the conditions were not there for Mozilla to win on commercial smartphones”, explains Mozilla.
Roter thanked the developers who “poured” their “hearts” into Firefox OS for smartphones.
The decision was taken after analyzing the situation, and finding that Firefox OS, being a young OS, could not compete neck-to-neck with other matured operating systems.
Also, Mozilla will remove all apps that don’t support Firefox OS.
Mozilla has effectively exited the smartphone realm because of competition from the likes of Apple, Google, and to a lesser extent Microsoft.
The most important bits begin with a phase-out starting with version 2.6 of Firefox OS. The end of Firefox OS was officially confirmed today by Mozilla’s Head of Core Contributors, George Roter.
Mozilla’s role in this is also a bit unclear, it would make sense if the company is working on an open standard that allows devices to securely communicate with each other.
One of the first three projects to clear the first gate includes Mozilla’s Smart TV spin of Firefox OS used by Panasonic.
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We won’t know what else Mozilla is talking about until the company opens up the non-staff participation process in the “first half of the year”.
