Once, Mozilla Firefox was what Google Chrome is now -- a rising browser stealing hits from Internet Explorer. Today, it makes up just 16 percent of the market, compared to 16 percent for Internet Explorer, 16 percent for Safari, and nearly 35 percent for Chrome, as of September 2013, according to The Next Web. In 2011, it made up nearly 27 percent of the market to IE's 40 and Chrome's 16.
Rather than devote all its efforts into regaining its internet share, Mozilla is attempting to break into a particular niche of the smart phone pie: affordable phones. With the help of newly formed partnerships, Mozilla announced Sunday its plans to develop a $25 phone to developing countries, CNET reported.
"Imagine the phone in your pocket is a feature phone. Imagine, when you go buy one of these devices, that every euro is precious to you," Mozilla's Mitchell Baker said in describing the phone's place. "...The richness and power we're able to offer to this market, you'll be astonished. Then imagine where we can go from there."
Even if the phone's features are mostly representative of its price, most news outlets are impressed.
"So no, I'm not going to recommend this phone to my relatively affluent friends," CNET's Stephan Shankland wrote in concluding his analysis of the phone. "But for the price of a nice bottle of wine, it's an impressive achievement."
Even as Mozilla's other low cost ventures in less rich countries have done well, Shankland and other sources don't believe its success will be sustainable as hardware becomes cheaper to produce and higher-end phones like those operating on Android invariably come down in price.
