10 May 2007

Mozilla's Firefox strategy includes mobile phones

APC Magazine has an intriguing interview with Mozilla Foundation CEO Mitchell Baker on the state of mobile web browsers and Mozilla's plans to develop a mobile version of Firefox.

Baker says developers are working on a mobile browser, but says it's a long term goal and nothing users should expect to see anytime soon. While the Minimo project is based on Mozilla, it isn't an official product and it's still a few (dozen) steps behind Opera Mobile when it comes to speed and performance.

Baker says some of the things people like most about Firefox are add-ons and the ability to customize the browser, which are things Mozilla would want to bring to a mobile version. One of the main challenges is bringing the full web experience to a small screen. An experiment, called Joey, is currently underway to look at ways to deliver information to mobile devices.

It'll be interesting to see how a mobile version of FireFox would stack up to Opera Mobile, or to the great Safari based browser which offers the best mobile browsing experience nowadays.