Firefox to debut on Android?

Fennec does the robot

29 June 2009 17:26 GMT / By Duncan Geere

Shortly after announcing the release of Firefox 3.5, Mozilla's also talking about an Android port for its mobile browser - codenamed Fennec.

Until recently, applications on Android ran on Google's Java virtual machine. However, last week the Android Native Development Kit version 1.0 was released, which lets apps run natively in Android.

That means that the door's opened for a mobile version of Firefox on the platform, something that wasn't previously available. A year ago, Mozilla said that it wasn't looking at Android because of the Java constraint.

However, it's now looking more likely. Jay Sullivan, Mozilla's vice president of mobile, said: "Developers are taking a look at the NDK to see if it provides the capabilities we need to bring Fennec to Android. If it's possible, I think our community would be interested in doing it, because Android will be appearing on more smartphones with the capabilities to provide a good browsing experience".

We'll keep you posted.

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