This article is more than 1 year old

Nokia 'invests in Mozilla'

Browser options open

Nokia has invested in the Mozilla Foundation according to a report at CNET which cites anonymous sources. Nokia won't confirm the news, but it makes sense for the phone giant to keep its options open. Nokia currently ships the runaway leading browser Opera on its Symbian smartphones. In February Mozilla's Minimo Project for handhelds and embedded manufacturers released its first public preview, based on Mozilla 1.7.

Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner paid them a compliment last year, telling us, "You have to hand it to them they have made a browser that works. It's Not as small as Opera, but these are not stupid guys. Mozilla is very powerful." He suggested the open source team would have trouble shoe-horning the code into a small device: Mozilla on the desktop takes longer to load than many phones take to boot. And Minimo is some considerable way from being either finished, or competitive with the Norweigian browser, as this memory graphs shows. Opera has years' experience from embedding its browser - it was one of the company's first projects in the mid-1990s, and the embedded Linux browser Opera runs in around 3MB of memory. It's even worked out a way of linking the two boxes: developing a program guide that turns a Symbian phone into a remote control for the TiVo, or other PVR (personal video recorder).

If confirmed, Nokia's investment should remind Opera that it can't take the market for granted. On devices with less memory (Opera requires 2.5MB, although that isn't a problem on new phones) Nokia promoted Anygraaf's Doris Browser. (Finnish company Anygraaf is staffed by former employees of Siemens graphics systems, but the mobile browser isn't its primary business).®

Related stories

AOL kills Netscape
Browser wars suit ends with death knell for Netscape
Cleaner, lighter Mozilla vowed
Opera launches 250% go-faster for mobile phone browser
Public offering for Opera, Mozilla renames browser
Opera: Your mother should know
Earth to Andreessen: browser innovation is at hand

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like