This weeks Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker has revealed that Mozilla has no current plans to launch their new Mozilla Firefox OS smartphone in the US in the near future. Explaining that they have created their smartphone to appeal more to developing countries.
This might come as a surprise to many as previous CEO Gary Kovacs explained during this years Mobile World Congress that Firefox OS phones would be arriving in the US on Sprint in 2014. Now it seems that Mozilla is moving away from this path.
As during the recent OpenMobile Summit this week, Mozilla Executive Chair Mitchell Baker appeared to backtrack on the arrival of the Firefox OS smartphones arriving in the US. Baker explained to CNET’s editor-in-chief, Paul Sloan : “Currently, there are no plans to launch in the US,” .
However it has been clarified that Mozilla will still be offering have developer phones for the US market, and to date has already sold more than 1,300 on eBay. Baker also highlighted the importance of the company’s strategy to market to developing countries, something that both Apple and Google don’t currently do.
“For most of the world, price is really important. But for us, a $500 phone, how many of us have one,”-“How many cents you can shave off the bottom of the phone is the driving factor,”.
The Firefox OS first known as Boot to Gecko is a Linux-based open-source operating system which has been created for smartphones and tablet computers by Mozilla, the non-profit organisation best known for the Firefox web browser.
Source: CNET