In a milestone for Mozilla’s Firefox OS mobile phone platform, the ZTE Open Firefox OS phone recently started selling via eBay in the U.S. and U.K. Mozilla officials confirmed the news with some fanfare only a few days ago, noting that unlocked phones would sell for $79.99 and users could easily pick their own carriers. Now, the phones have sold out in both the U.S.. and U.K., causing some observers to wonder if these phones might be a hit outside the emerging markets that they were originally delivered in.
Before fans of these phones get carried away, let’s put the sales in perspective. You can track the sales in the U.S. and U.K. on eBay, and there were 990 phones sold in the U.K. and 985 sold in the U.S. Those are not huge numbers for low cost phones. Still, these phones had arrived previously in smaller markets, including several in Latin America. They clearly made a splash with users outside those markets.