S60 devices to get it soon

Dec 15, 2008 08:46 GMT  ·  By

Mozilla has been pretty faithful to Windows Mobile and Linux for some time, a fact arising even from that, two months ago, when the alpha version of Fennec was released, there was no word on the development of such a browser for other mobile platforms. Now, however, after taking a look at Symbian's second and third quarter sales, the company behind Firefox seems to have decided it can no longer remain exclusive to Windows Mobile or Linux.

As a result, Mozilla has made a deal with Symbian, since it is the world's leading mobile platform, with the main idea that, by working together, the two companies will create a Symbian compatible S60 Firefox browser. After judging Mozilla's latest release for Linux, based on the Maemo platform, which brings mostly more freedom for programmers regarding the interface and makes it easier to add features, and after also listening to the rumors, the obvious conclusion is that almost the same kind of browser is to be designed for the S60 devices as well.

According to Christian Sejersen's blog, this is Mozilla's declaration on the matter: “Today we (Mozilla) are focusing our efforts in mobile on Linux and Windows Mobile devices. In Q3 2008 Symbian had 49.8% of the total smartphone sales (and 57% in Q2) according to Gartner compared to 11.1% for Windows Mobile and 7.2% for Linux. There are a few other platforms: iPhone, RIM and Android that have or are gaining market share, where we for technical or licensing reasons can’t be deployed. So in order for Mozilla to be relevant in the smartphone space we need to have a presence on the Symbian platform. We have worked with Symbian to understand and scope the size of the project and Symbian are supporting this with engineers to start working on this project so far. At the same time, several Symbian houses are interested in contributing work.”

This Symbian compatible browser is to be first unveiled at a demo at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. As Mozilla emphasized, this 5-stage development plan must be perfectly respected, should the company want the development to be complete according to schedule.