Mozilla in 2013 decided to get their hands wet in the Smartphone OS market. After a number of collaborations with many manufacturers based out of Europe and other countries, Mozilla has now decided to go another way!
Mozilla had partnered with Intex and Spice in India to manufacture a ultra cheap Smartphones (dubbed $25 phone). But, the results were terrible. They released Spice Fire One For 2299 & Intex Cloud Fx For 1999, but the devices faced much criticism and hardly anyone showed interest in them. According to reports only few hundred smartphones were sold by both the brands.
Mozilla has now decided to take another route and this time it’s not going to be the price as the focal point, but the quality. Under CEO Chris Beard’s management, Mozilla is aiming to execute the ‘Ignite’ initiative that will focus on churning out compelling features in the OS. This was disclosed by Beard in his email to all Mozilla employees.
Mozilla will now be offering an OS which will offer much better performance but a compromise will be made on the price as the official mail revealed. Mozilla has also said that they are not going towards high end Smartphones, but they will stick to budget range for the future production of the Smartphones. Also, we could see Spice or Intex bringing in the new Firefox OS Smartphones in market.
Mozilla has mentioned that they will be concentrating on developing a flexible OS which will be able to run the Android apps as well so that users don’t have to compromise over the availability of apps if they decide to shift on the new OS. The new strategy from Mozilla to remove the gap could be the next big move for the company. As Microsoft has also did the same for the Windows Phone 10.
Not just this, Mozilla’s next big thing also includes focus on IoT (Internet of Things). Many companies are jumping the IoT bandwagon – Huawei recently announced LiteOS, their own IoT OS, While Google may announce details about their IoT OS, Google Brillo.
Highlights from Mozilla’s new ignite program.
- A OS with better performance than price.
- A flexible OS for better user experience.
- Availability of Android apps on new OS.
- Concentration on budget and mid range Smartphones.
- Better offline working capabilities in the OS.
- IoT a priority for Mozilla.
- A stop on $25 Smartphone production.
However, with the announcement Firefox OS will be competing with Google’s Android OS which is already dominating the market with 1 billion active users as of June 2014 report.
Will Mozilla be able to make a headway into the market with this new approach ? What’s do you think?
