Samsung Won’t Be Backing Firefox OS

At this week’s Mobile World Congress, Mozilla announced that it had secured four hardware partners for its first run of Firefox OS handsets. Those four partners – Alcatel, LG, ZTE and Huaw...
Samsung Won’t Be Backing Firefox OS
Written by
  • At this week’s Mobile World Congress, Mozilla announced that it had secured four hardware partners for its first run of Firefox OS handsets. Those four partners – Alcatel, LG, ZTE and Huawei – represent a pretty diverse chunk of OEMs. The platform won’t be supported, however, by one of the largest OEMs in the world.

    CNET reports that Samsung won’t be making any Firefox OS smartphones for the time being. It’s not entirely surprising, but it’s still disappointing that Firefox OS won’t be seeing powerful hardware from Samsung in the future.

    There are a number of reasons that we may not be seeing a Samsung, or any other major OEM, supporting Firefox OS in the near future. For one, Firefox OS is targeted at emerging markets. Samsung does make entry level phones, but its primary focus is on the consumer market in developed countries with devices like the Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note.

    Besides, Samsung already has it hands full with the upcoming launch of Tizen, it’s own open source mobile OS. Supporting Firefox OS on top of Android, Windows Phone and Tizen would be too much for any OEM.

    For now, Firefox OS will have to do with its current stable of hardware partners. LG has proven it can build a great phone with its Nexus 4 for Google so a Firefox OS-powered LG phone could be rather attractive. Of course, we won’t know for certain until top level Firefox OS hardware hits after the initial launch of entry level devices.

    Get the WebProNews newsletter delivered to your inbox

    Get the free daily newsletter read by decision makers

    Subscribe
    Advertise with Us

    Ready to get started?

    Get our media kit