It’s been a very exciting week for the mobile Internet. Two companies have announced developments for mobile devices and one of the announcements was rather a big one. Mozilla, the company responsible for Firefox and MiniMo have announced they they are getting serious.
People ask us all the time about what Mozilla’s going to do about the mobile web, and I’m very excited to announce that we plan to rock it.
That’s what Michael Schroepfer, aka Schrep, VP of Mozilla Engineering, had to say on his blog. I could say that they’re going to hit it like Herbie Handcock but I guess it actually means they’re going to get tough…(the tough get going?) There’s a lot to take on in his post including some really nice references to ARMs latest announcements (8x processing power by 2010 with Cortex 9) and Ubuntu Mobile but unfortunately there’s no information about what platforms will be supported. Will they work on Windows Mobile, Series 60 or both? What is clear is that mobile platforms will be part of the core decision making process for Mozilla 2, the core engine planned for the latter part of 2008. (Interesting blog on the Mozilla roadmap here which blows my mind an makes me think that the browser is becoming an operating system in it own right!)
The new mobile browser won’t be a further development of MiniMo though. It looks like that experiment will come to an end and be superseded by ‘Mobile Firefox’. I assume that if it’s built on Mozilla 2 then its going to be in late 2008 that we’ll see a commercial release.
Is this the right time? Absolutely! Up until very recently device limitations required writing new mobile browsers from the ground up. Being able to leverage all the investments in the Mozilla platform across both desktops and devices is the right approach. There is far from a dominant player in this marketplace and even the best mobile browsers today have compromises in user experience, performance, and compatibility. There is still *plenty* of room for innovation. – Schrep.
I couldn’t agree more. Microsoft have dropped the ball on the Mobile Internet Explorer browser and Apple are proving that the mass market for mobile Internet is ripening. Opera, Symbian (they didn’t appear too positive about the Mozilla announcement!) and others (see below) are ready to move in. There are new browsing systems to consider too. Silverlight, Picsel and Adobe AIR for example. Hardware manufacturers are also getting ready to offer new mobile platforms. Mobile-ITX and Moorestown on X86, Cortex 8 and 9 on ARM. Its exciting to see it taking shape.
Mozilla weren’t the only company to make a browser announcement this week though, a small company called Wake3 is working on a version of WebKit (the browser engine used in the iPod Touch and also available for the Nokia N800) for Windows Mobile. Apparently it has already been delivered to developers so we might see browsers based on this appearing in 2008 too. Wake3 need to sort out their PR though, the video they released is terrible, showing a 320×240 screen displaying Google News (a very simple web site) and the Yahoo.com front page. Trying to use a full-size web page with a traditional browsing method on QVGA is just painful.
While this was a great week for news, we’re going to have to wait a long time for products and during that time the x86 devices just get smaller and smaller. If VIA make the Mobile-ITX platform widely available then Firefox 2 can go handheld and mobile in dedicated, high power, 3D-capable, PC-architecture based devices before anything is ready on smartphones.
