The Mozilla Foundation said it’s shutting down the remains of its connected things division, which is responsible for the failed Firefox OS and other projects.

“We have shifted our internal approach to the IoT opportunity to step back from a focus on launching and scaling commercial products to one focused on research and advanced development,” a Mozilla spokesman said in an email Feb. 2 confirming the news the organization was laying off 50 employees.

The organization said it would dissolve its connected devices team and instead “incorporate our IoT explorations into an increased focus on emerging technologies.” Ari Jaaksi, senior vice president of Mozilla’s connected devices unit, is among those who have left the organization.

Firefox OS was the highest-profile project of Mozilla’s connected devices unit. The operating system was developed as part of Mozilla’s bid to develop a rival mobile operating system to challenge Android, and was launched back in 2013. The OS focused on the concept of open-web apps that could run on any platform, and was primarily designed for low-end smartphones in emerging markets. Unfortunately for Mozilla, however, the Firefox OS projects ran into many of the same problems as Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS – failing to woo enough developers and hardware makers — which ultimately meant there was little interest among consumers in the platform.

Mozilla finally admitted defeat in its efforts in December 2015, and instead announced that Firefox OS would be reinvented as a platform for Internet of Things devices. The company also announced a partnership with TV maker Panasonic Corp. to develop Firefox OS as a platform for its 4K smart TVs. However, this was canceled last summer when Mozilla said maintenance would be carried out by commercial partners.

Although Firefox OS will be shut down, some lesser-known projects will continue after shifting to a different part of the organization, CNet reported. These include Mozilla’s DeepSpeech AI, which now falls under its emerging technologies group, and Vaani, which is a more privacy-focused version of Amazon Alexa.

These are tumultuous times for Mozilla, which has seen its flagship Firefox desktop browser lose a significant portion of its market share to Google’s Chrome, in addition to low adoption of the mobile version of its browser. Still, the organization actually recorded record revenues in 2015, which is the most recent year figures are available for. Following the end of its search deal with Google, Mozilla struck up partnerships with search companies including Yahoo Inc., Yandex and Baidu, earning $421 million in 2015.

Photo: César Dergarabedian Flickr via Compfight cc