Remember the great concept video of Firefox Mobile we showed you? The one that had us oh so excited for a Mozilla-powered browser experience on our mobiles? Well it might just be the most you see of the highly-anticipated mobile browser for quite a while unfortunately. According to The Register’s interpretation of some comments made by Mozilla Foundation Chairperson Mitchell Baker, Mozilla doesn’t plan to release its mobile browser product until 2010. That… would not be cool. While The Register’s post has spawned a great deal of chatter on the interwebs, it may all be the result of a misinterpretation. Let’s look at the mobile bullet points in Baker’s “Proposed 2010 Goals” post:
• have an effective product in the mobile market
• demonstrate that “mobile” is part of one, unified, open web
It is quite possible that “have an effective product in the mobile market” might not mean “release Firefox Mobile” as The Register seems to believe. Is it reasonable for a company to think that its virgin mobile browser offering can be released and become “effective” in the same year? We might argue that Mozilla is targeting next year for initial release and it might hope to have a more refined product that has a decent early market share by some time in 2010. Or are we just letting our hopes get the best of us? Either way, there is nothing concrete in The Register’s post so we’ll keep holding on to the dream that Mozilla will swoop down and save us from the horror that is [most] mobile browsing sometime in 2009.
[Via The Register]