Mozilla to focus on quality rather than cost for Firefox smartphone

Mozilla, which first started on a marketing strategy to offer low cost smartphones to the consumers, has revamped its plans and is now going to focus more on the quality instead of the cost of while building a Firefox smartphone.

The company released a $25 Firefox OS smartphone but it failed miserably and didn’t do any good for Mozilla to mark its presence in the smartphone industry. A lot of analyst predicted that Mozilla’s low-cost strategy will be suitable for markets where cost of a smartphone is a big factor to consider before buying one. But it seems that even in those markets, Mozilla’s Firefox OS based smartphone failed against the giants like Google Android and Apple iOS.

An email from the new CEO of Mozilla Chris Beard states that Mozilla is going to revamp the Firefox smartphone division and will now be focusing on bring more feature rich smartphone rather than just focusing on keeping the cost low. The email also noted that Mozilla is considering to enable Android apps installation on Firefox OS in order to attract more customers to it.

Chris Beard said in email, “We will build phones and connected devices that people want to buy because of the experience, not simply the price. We have not seen sufficient traction for a $25 phone, and we will not pursue all parts of the program.”

Mozilla’s abrupt shift to its new strategy shows how difficult it for a new smartphone OEM to attract customers and make its way into the smartphone industry. The market is very competitive and unless there is something unique that a company is offering, no one is going to take the risk to try something new. It’s not that Mozilla’s Firefox OS is bad or lacks features, it is the fierce competition and the monopoly which Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android has created in the market which leaves little to no room for any other company to kickstart easily.