The first Firefox OS-powered Chromecast competitor is already dead

Firefox OS suffered yet another blow to its adoption yesterday when crowd-funded Chromecast competitor Matchstick announced that it will no longer be developing the Firefox OS-powered dongle due to issues with implementing DRM. Backers of the device have their money refunded, which means Mozilla is going to have to find a new partner to help it take on the likes of Amazon and Google. 

Matchstick has announced via Kickstarter update that it has cancelled the $25 Firefox OS-based HDMI dongle, designed to compete with the likes of the Google Chromecast. Backers of the project will receive a full refund. Initially designed to be fully open source, the Matchstick was fully certified by Mozilla — which also spent plenty of time drumming up hype. Both companies were devoted to luring developers onto the platform, and a workshop for the device was hosted in November. However, open sourcing apparently came at a price, as the Matchstick team said that it found difficulty in solidifying DRM development: “After struggling with the DRM development based on Firefox OS for most of this year, we realize continued development of DRM, though showing early signs of promise, will be a long and difficult road. We have come to the conclusion that we will not be able to reliably predict the completion date of the DRM development without significantly more research, development and integration.”