22 October 2007

With billions of mobile devices in use today and even more expected in the near future, software vendors are looking to expand wireless platforms.  Mozilla has announced a new push to bring its popular Firefox offering to the mobile space and avoid missing on the new market opportunities.

Mozilla’s aim is to turn mobile devices into a first-class platform for its application framework. The goal is to provide wireless users with a fully functioning Firefox experience, including support for browser extensions as well as enabling other developers to build applications on top of it.

This work is happening in the Mozilla community with the full support of the Mozilla Foundation/Corporation,

said Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's vice president of engineering.

To support the initiative, Mozilla is setting up a research and development center in Copenhagen, Denmark, which recent new recruit Christian Sejersen will lead. Sejersen joined Mozilla after having overseen browsers at mobile technology vendor Openwave, which already has a long history in the wireless Web browser space.

Mozilla is no stranger to the mobile environment, although it's done relatively little compared to its work in the traditional PC environment. A Mozilla-based browser already runs on the Nokia N800, and Mozilla maintains a second, somewhat limited mobile browser project called Minimo. That project will be sidelined in favour of this week's larger effort.

Minimo was based on an older version of Firefox and only supported Windows mobile devices. Schroepfer said:

By using the latest version of Firefox, we can dramatically improve performance, reduce memory requirements, and support a larger number of devices.

The actual devices that the new mobile Mozilla effort will support, however, are not yet known. Mozilla have stated that Linux mobile devices definitely will be among those supported, but the full list of supported devices has yet to be finalised.

Mozilla also has yet to determine its projected launch date for the Mobile Firefox release, although it said the browser is unlikely to emerge before 2008.


Keep up to date with industry and Nomensa news by signing up to Nomensa newsletters.