Friday, 10 September 2010
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Mozilla Firefox For Android – ETA February?

Already available for Maemo (as a RC1 version) and Windows Mobile (as an alpha 1 version), the mobile version of Mozilla’s Firefox browser, aka “Fennec” may soon be available for Google’s Android platform, too.

Camp-firefox.de is reporting that the first usable beta version of Firefox for Android may be out in February.

Why should you be bothered? For starters Fennec incorporates the so-called “Awesome Bar” from Firefox 3.0, which does much more than your usual browser URL bar.

Add to that support for Mozilla’s research project called “Weave”. Mozilla will be looking to leverage existing desktop users of Firefox toward Fennec and Weave will help make this possible as it enables users to access their desktop remotely over the Web.

However, aside from the many kinks and bugs that still remain with Fennec in its current version, Mozilla also faces the difficult task of finding ways to distribute it.

Don’t expect the App Store to stock Fennec anytime soon: the mobile Safari browser is pretty much one of the iPhone’s biggest selling points, with its ability to render pages as desktop-accurate as possible.

Similarly, Microsoft, Google, and RIM all bundle mobile web browsers with their mobile operating systems, (Windows Mobile, Android, and BlackBerry respectively), so Fennec faces entrenched competition in these quarters too.

Mozilla’s successful distribution is more likely to hinge on whether they manage to mangae to strike up deals with handset manufacturers the way Opera has with its mobile browser, Opera Mini.