Firefox Mobile Coming Late 2010?
Last month we heard the great (but inaccurate) news that Firefox for Android would launch a beta in February. With that rumor debunked, all we knew was that the company was making progress and we would see SOMETHING at SOME point. There are still 10 months in the year, but at least you can be confident that Firefox for Android will launch in 2010, as claimed by VP of mobiles Jay Sullivan.
He also says some interesting things about Android, namely in compliments:
“It’s a modern OS, and it’s a great fit with us. It’s the type of platform that has a high affinity with the early adopter, and it’s seen a lot of uptake.”
And in explaining the delay:
“Android has been built on a Java platform, whereas [Firefix Mobile] is based on C and C++ code. Until last year when [the Open Handset Alliance] released the NDK (native development kit) which allowed native code as part of the app, it was simply impossible.”
There are a lot of people eagerly awaiting Firefox Mobile for Android, often referred to as Fennec. Let’s hope they can bring some true innovation to the mobile browsing space, just as they’ve done on the desktop. I don’t doubt that they will.