We previously announced that we would stop offering smartphones through operator channels. The main reasons behind the decision were that we could not create a compelling and differentiating end-user value proposition and we failed to build the full ecosystem. Our team and community made an awesome push and created an impressive platform, but the circumstances were not there for Mozilla to win in the commercial smartphone game.

We’ve been working hard on the next steps of what that decision means for our work on future versions of Firefox OS as we prototype Connected Devices solutions. To support this strategic pivot, we are working on an end-of-life plan for the smartphone project with the Firefox OS 2.6 release. This planning also includes end-of-life for Firefox Marketplace across various platforms: smartphones, Firefox desktop and Firefox for Android.

Although Mozilla development of the smartphone OS will cease with 2.6, the OS stack will be used for Smart TVs and potentially other devices in the future. Our platform is open, as always, for volunteers, contributors and enthusiasts to improve on and submit patches for further advancement of the OS stack.

There is no change in our plans with Panasonic on their SmartTV line of products. We are excited to continue working with them on a SmartTV experience based on the Firefox OS 2.6 release and beyond. We will also continue our efforts to create a strong web-based content offering on SmartTVs.

All the hard work and resulting code are a good contribution to our future work on Connected Devices and to the Web as a platform. With them both, we added more than 30 WebAPIs and proved the Web is flexible enough to support products from smartphones to TVs — it also stands as a great starting point to proceed to the next phase of Connected Devices.