Developers Snapped Up Roughly 1,000 Firefox Phones In First Few Hours Of Availability

The tech industry has been abuzz with news that the first, available Firefox OS phones sold out within a few hours of going on sale today. But how many devices were actually shipped by Geeksphone, the small Spanish manufacturer that made them? Around 1,000, according to Geeksphone founder and CEO Javier Aguera, who added that although his online shop was currently down, it would be up again on Wednesday morning Madrid time to take more orders.

"Today is going to be a long day," he said during a phone interview at around 10.30 p.m. Madrid time on Tuesday.

Geeksphone has already shipped more than 10,000 devices tailored to run Firefox OS, the new web-based mobile phone platform coded by Mozilla, to developers. More have been earmarked for internal use by Mozilla employees and other partners, Aguera said.

Larger manufacturers like Sony   LG Electronics and Huawei have committed to commercially release Firefox phones en mass later this year. But Geeksphone is the first to offer two Firefox phones aimed at early adopters and developers interested in making applications for Firefox OS.

Aguera says he was surprised at the way customers stormed his online shop in the first hours that Geeksphone's two Firefox devices, the $119 Keon and $194 Peak, went on sale.

"What we were not expecting is that speed for selling," he said. "So immediately after we announced it we had thousands of people visiting the store, checking the prices, trying to make purchases. We were surprised at the quick reaction."

Geeksphone opened its store on Tuesday at 8am Madrid time, and was out of stock by around noon. The company has partnered with Qualcomm on chipsets and component suppliers in Asia. It outsources to a company in central China to assemble the final devices, although it plans to eventually manufacture the phones in Brazil -- "if business development plans go well," Aguera said.

Aguera could have expanded the number of phones available to order on his site today, but didn't want to overload his 20-person company with a glut in orders and delays to shipping. "There is enough being manufactured in China to keep up with demand," he added. "Anybody that wants to be able to purchase a device will be able to do so tomorrow without too much problem."

If demand for early Firefox phones keeps growing, he hopes to manufacture "tens of thousands" of these web-based phones by the end of 2013.

Firefox OS as a software platform offers an alternative to third-party developers who already make apps for Apples' iOS, Google 's Android or Microsoft 's Windows Phone, by being based on open-web standards or HTML5. Such apps can work across any platform, though they are often criticized in the developer community for being of lower quality to "native" apps tailored to iOS or Android.

Mozilla, a non-profit organization, is targeting emerging markets in South America and Eastern Europe and says it hopes to sell "millions" of Firefox phones by the end of 2013.

Telefonica is Mozilla's most important carrier partner among 17 others from around the world, having tasked dozens of its own engineers to make services for Firefox OS. Telefonica also set aside a marketing budget in the double-digit millions of euros to market Firefox phones in South America and Europe later this year.

Aguera, 20, started Geeksphone in 2009 (when he was 16) and initially manufactured phones that ran the Android operating system. Last year, however, he changed the company's focus to powering the Firefox OS platform because of the wealth of industry support for Mozilla's latest mobile project. He adds on the Geeksphone site that Firefox OS answers a common aim for "mobile freedom."