Firefox Goes Mobile
Firefox Goes Mobile
About time. Firefox has finally released a browser for mobiles.
It is going to be available from the mozilla website and the Nokia Ovi store. However, there won’t be a version for Apple because their systems are ‘closed and restrictive’ according to the BBC.
Firefox is reported as being the world’s most popular browser with 21.93% of the market share over IE7. However, the article doesn’t talk about IE6. Which an awful lot of companies still use as their primary browser. Maybe they are skipping IE7 and investigating the possibility of moving directly to IE8.
What about the applications (in Firefox speak Add-Ons). Jay Sullivan of Mozilla says that the add-ons will add functionality to the phone and not just the browser. Functions like geo-location are going to become more and more common. Reading between the lines they are really going to go for the mobile browser market including the iphone.
One other thing – Apple’s App store currently has over 100,000 applications ready for download / purchase. Blackberry, Google, Symbian and Microsoft have all their own versions of applications (however, the sizes of these libraries have not been confirmed). Mozilla doesn’t see that their browser apps would replace these but, Sullivan says they will “co-exist”.
Oh – they are also stating that their mobile browser (codenamed Fennec) will also resize the pages to the size of the phone something which iPhone’s zooming and smooth scrolling has given its users an all round fantastic user experience.
So is this going to make mobile browsing more interesting and mobile website more important. I think that is a given to be honest. If your site isn’t optimised for websites within the next 18 months then I feel that you’re going to lose business. A good friend of mine, Cindy Krum (@suzzicks), has written a book about mobile marketing and its importance in modern day marketplace
Pre-Order Cindy’s Book @Amazon here
UK banks are already making a move into the mobile marketing arena – Natwest has just published a banking application for iPhone users (no news whether this has been replicated across Blackberry, Symbian, Microsoft handsets) but, its received an awful lot of press across the commuter route into London.
Unsurprisingly, this has also been replicated for RBS customers….
But why isn’t this iphone app from NatWest available for users of the “3″ network. Interesting one to puzzle over.
I think that the next thing people need to understand is just the cost of internet browsing. Finally we are getting cheaper calls when browsing the European states but what about internet browsing? Why is that still £3 per megabyte? Maybe that is something that the mobile phone operators need to look at next for ALL handsets and not just those that have blackberries and iphones.
Related Links:
BBC News Article – Firefox for Mobile
Mobile Marketing by Cindy Krum
NatWest iPhone Application Page
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