Firefox OS fork KaiOS is on 100 million phones

KaiOS, an operating system for inexpensive feature phones without a touchscreen, is on one hundred million phones. The company behind the operating system has announced this. The most famous model is the Nokia 8110 4g.

Phones with KaiOS are for sale in 100 countries, the company says. An important market is India, where manufacturer Jio makes a KaiOS phone. The first devices with the operating system came out about two years ago.

KaiOS Technologies also announces that it has raised fifty million dollars in an investment round. Lenders are manufacturer TCL and Android maker Google. Both have previously invested in KaiOS. Google did that last year.

The operating system wants to distinguish itself by supporting 4G, NFC and Bluetooth for cheap models. Some smartphone services also run on KaiOS, such as WhatsApp, Google Maps and Google Assistant. The operating system is based on Mozilla’s mobile project Boot2Gecko, which also produced Firefox OS. Mozilla has retired from Firefox OS and several of the developers are now working at KaiOS.