Mozilla shutters Firefox OS, gives up on smartphones

Mozilla confirmed Tuesday that it was halting development on Firefox OS in its current incarnation, putting an end to more than four years of work building a browser-based, smartphone operating system.

"Firefox OS proved the flexibility of the Web, scaling from low-end smartphones all the way up to HD TVs. However, we weren't able to offer the best user experience possible and so we will stop offering Firefox OS smartphones through carrier channels," said Denelle Dixon-Thayer, Mozilla's chief legal and business officer, in an emailed statement.

News of the decision initially reached Twitter on Tuesday when some attendees of Mozilla's annual developer conference broke the news. Georg Fritzsche, a Mozilla software engineer, had tweeted, for example, "Honesty & courage for Firefox OS: back off from commercial shipping, re-iterate as innovation project 'connected devices.' "

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