Firefox for Windows Mobile put on hold for foreseeable future

Windows Mobile users still waiting for the release of Firefox Mobile are going to be disappointed — Mozilla has halted development of its ‘ Fennec’ web browser for the platform.

The news comes from the blog of Firefox developer Stuart Parmenter, who cites the inability to transfer the current project to the new Windows Phone 7 platform as the reason to put it on ice.

Microsoft’s new smartphone operating system doesn’t support native applications, only those created using the XNA game development environment and .NET. Applications written for Windows Mobile 6.x are, of course, incompatible with Windows Phone 7.

So, since Windows Mobile will become all but a dead operating system come the end of the year (when WP7 is due to launch) and with no easy way to re-use the work done so far on Fennec, it’s the end of the line for the project on this platform.

Parmenter says:

"While we think Windows Phone 7 looks interesting and has the potential to do well in the market, Microsoft has unfortunately decided to close off development to native applications. Because of this, we won’t be able to provide Firefox for Windows Phone 7 at this time."

We first wrote about Fennec for Windows Mobile just over two years ago and while there still isn’t a final version of the web browser, usable beta versions have been available for some time.

The news isn’t perhaps such a big blow for WP7 as it is for existing Window Mobile users, since the new OS will hopefully have a much better built-in browser than the current Internet Explorer Mobile. The Fennec project will presumably continue for the Maemo platform, though.

As many observers have pointed out, Mozilla’s decision to back away from WP7 does illustrate the risk in Microsoft’s decision to start afresh with its mobile OS.

Such a bold step was certainly needed to revive ailing platform in a world where the iPhone and Android devices are making serious inroads, but placing constraints on how developers can create apps could be a step too far — and that’s something Apple realised quite some time ago with the iPhone. So, with the copy and paste palaver, the limits placed on hardware and now this, could Microsoft be repeating Apple’s mistakes when it really should be learning from them..?

[ blog.pavlov.net via The Unwired]