14 DAY TRIAL // Skyfire announced on Thursday the purchase of kolbysoft, the creators of the Steel mobile browser for Android. According to the company, the acquisition is effective immediately, and represents a new step the company makes towards delivering its own mobile browser for the Android operating system. This move is made due to the fact that many users already asked for a Skyfire browser to be delivered for Google's Android operating system, and should result in a faster development process.
“By adding kolbysoft’s talent to Skyfire, we’ll be able to fuse the best of Skyfire’s famed cloud-computing multimedia capabilities with the Webkit browser movement to create a better hybrid model for Android. Steel has been the most acclaimed browser in the Android Marketplace, adding features atop Webkit. Together, we’ll be able to do so much more,” the company notes on its Skyfire Blog.
At the same time, Skyfire reports that the new acquisition is set to offer it the possibility to tap into the Android and user experience that kolbysoft already has. Moreover, it plans on making Michael Kolb, founder of kolbysoft, chief client architect for the different versions of Skyfire browser on all mobile operating systems. Those who already use the existing version of the Steel browser on their Android-based mobile phones will be able to do so from now on too, and they will receive upgrades to the Skyfire Android edition as soon as the mobile browser is released.
Unfortunately, the company hasn't unveiled any exact details on when the Android flavor of the Skyfire mobile browser becomes available, though it will announce more as soon as things are starting to move in this direction. As most of you might know by now, Skyfire is currently one of the most popular browsers for various operating systems out there, and is expected to enjoy the same popularity on Android too, even if it has some very powerful competitors in the area, including the Webkit browser, Opera, or the soon to come Firefox.