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Skyfire kills browser support for Windows Mobile, Symbian

November 17, 2010 — 11:59am ET | By Jason Ankeny

Mobile web solutions developer Skyfire will halt support for its legacy v1.0 browser for Windows Mobile and Symbian smartphones as of Dec. 31. "This two-year old product used a 'proxy browser' approach which is no longer our vision," Skyfire CEO Jeff Glueck explained on the firm's blog. "It was a revolutionary product when introduced and offered for free, but the fast-moving mobile market has changed significantly since 2007, and as a small tech start-up, we need to keep innovating forward."

Skyfire will instead focus on its 2.0 browser solution, which touts full support for HTML5, offline browsing, JavaScript, WebKit and full-screen video. According to Glueck, Skyfire mulled the idea of introducing a premium service enabling Windows Mobile and Symbian users to continue using the solution, "but the payment mechanisms were very cumbersome and the piracy rates were so high on those OS platforms that we could not make it work. More importantly, we faced a decision point: If we were to begin charging money for a product, we had to commit to multiple years of support and enhancement of the product."

Skyfire plans to extend the 2.0 browser to additional platforms, identifying Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 and Nokia's MeeGo as likely targets. Earlier this month, Skyfire sold out inventory of its Flash Video-enabled browser for Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone within five hours of the solution's App Store launch, halting additional sales until it can increase server capacity. Skyfire for iPhone allows consumers to finally run Adobe Flash-based content on their iOS-based smartphones, working around the operating system's restrictions on the Flash runtime by translating video content in the HTML5 web standard; the browser then displays a thumbnail that iPhone users can click to stream the clip from Skyfire's servers.

For more:
- read this Skyfire Blog entry