Mozilla fires part of the team after stopping Firefox OS for smartphones

Mozilla is firing part of its Connected Devices team after it has stopped developing Firefox OS for smartphones. The rest of the employees in that part of Mozilla continue to work on Firefox OS for the Internet of Things.

The layoffs will affect a small number of employees, Mozilla said in a statement to The Verge. The Firefox developer doesn’t give exact numbers on that. These are people who contributed to Firefox OS for smartphones, a mobile operating system that Mozilla worked on for several years, but never attracted much attention.

Mozilla pulled the plug on Firefox OS at the end of last year. The intention was to build a mobile operating system based on web technologies such as HTML and JavaScript for inexpensive smartphones. Phones have been released with Firefox OS, including a model from LG. In addition, the operating system can be flashed on some other phones, such as a cheap model from Sony.

Firefox OS continues to exist as an operating system for smart TVs and the Internet of Things. For smartphones, version 2.6 is the latest.