FireFox Phones Moving Closer To Release Date

Firefox OS phones broke onto the scene in February and they create a splash with the announcement they would be selling sometime this year. Given the powerhouse phones from Apple and Samsung, they will be facing an uphill battle to gain market share. There are so many brands out in the market and some, such as Blackberry having been struggling lately. But, a Firefox OS phone could just make the difference in taking advantage of a powerful name. As web based smart phone, it present something far different than anything we have seen before. Gone will be the very complex coding for apps on a smart phones. If you can code a web site, you can write an app for the coming Firefox OS phones. The idea of using open source code to drive a smart phone is nothing new and you only have to look back to Google and their Android OS. So, will a Firefox OS phone be popular?

Phones are currently selling for developers to develop their apps on and the first day of sales resulted in them selling out in a few hours the first 1000 units. More are planned to be made available for sale by today, but the quantities may not be enough to prevent another sell off. And these are not phones which are to be sold to the public as they are beta models of the hardware and FireFox OS. It is expected that the demand by developers for phones to test apps on will remain high for several weeks.

Based on the first day of sales, these are extremely popular among developers. This may not translate to actual consumer sales, but it does appear that developers will be buying models as quickly as they are put on sale. This will be the case for he next few weeks bolstering the idea of success for FireFox as an OS for smart phones. Multiple manufacturers are already lining up to build FireFox OS phones including Sony, Huawei and LG. The developer phones come in two models. The Keon, shown above, is selling for $119 and coming with a 3.5 inch screen, a 3 megapixel camera and 4 GB of storage. This sounds like a great price for an entry level smart phone and will do well in sales. The Peak, shown to the right is selling for $194. It comes with a 4.3 inch screen, 8 megapixel camera and the same 4 GB of storage. This one looks like a FireFox phone going after the heart of the smart phone market.

While we wrote about the FireFox OS coming to a crowded market back in February. But based on the rapid sell out on the first day, the market may not be all that crowded for a new entry into the market place. The developer models are being sold by GeeksPhone in their GeeksPhone online store. At the moment, they are still showing as sold out.

There is so much more to the FireFox OS phones in the future that we will continue to follow the story as it unfolds.