Bad news if you live in the U.S. and have hoped to get a Firefox OS-based smartphone. The company has no plans to sell its gear in America anytime soon though you can always buy their phones through importers.
Speaking to CNet, Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker stresses Firefox OS’s focus on the emerging markets of the world where price matters the most.
“Currently, there are no plans to launch in the US,” Baker said during a fireside-style conversation in front of an audience of around 100 people. She then clarified that Mozilla will have developer phones for the US market, which it has already sold more than 1,300 of on eBay.
She went on to talk about the pricing issue: “For most of the world, price is really important. But for us, a $500 phone, how many of us have one,” she asked rhetorically. “How many cents you can shave off the bottom of the phone is the driving factor,” she said.
Finally, she emphasized that her belief, and the belief of Mozilla, is not that is there room in the mobile world for more than just Apple and Google, but that the very concept of mobile is “an anomaly.” If we would think of smartphones as computers, we would get “a sense of their potential” and (apparently) see that there’s room for many other players. Not sure we agree completely with that statement, what do you think?