Introducing Fennec – Firefox’s Mobile Browser

So with a large part of the world quickly going mobile the browser wars are moving from the desktop to the mobile. Firefox which is the No.2 browser in the world in terms of market share has hardly had a browser in the mobile arena. A Mozilla based browser minimo was launched in 2004 and later updated in 2007 but the project was left midway by the developers.

So this new attempt by Firefox to launch a mobile can be termed as its first serious one. Fennec as the mobile browser is called stands for a small desert fox (what else did you expect from Firefox!). Currently the browser is in the alpha stage and can only be tested on a Nokia N810 tablet or on the PC.

Fennec Logo

Check the video below of the Fennec browser walkthrough:

[vimeo width="400" height="300"]http://vimeo.com/clip:1981300[/vimeo]

Firefox Popularity

Firefox is extremely popular among the techie audience due to its browser addons feature which is missing from any other browser. We had covered one such extension in ubiquity. Firefox has also been active in involving the developer community in building the browser of the future.

Browser Market

But the browser market got shaken up when Google decided to launch Chrome and has quickly overtakednthe number 3 player Opera in the desktop browser market share.

But mobile is a different ball game and has been largely dominated by Nokia symbian browser, blackberry’s browsers, operamini, Windows pocket internet explorer and of course iPhone’s safari browser which has gained market share very quickly.

Here are some stats on the total browser market the world over:

Why does it matter to India?

On the whole this move is important from an India point of view as my statistics tell me that 40% of WATBlog’s users are from firefox browsers which means that these people would surely be interested in a mobile browser from the firefox stable. Also the fact that mobile subcribers would touch 500 million by 2010 in India it would surely create a sizeable (if not really large) gprs enable phone + subscribers market in india by then.