Mozilla Firefox Won’t be Supporting BlackBerry Anytime Soon

Mozilla Firefox is often praised as being the best web browser on the planet and has quickly become the 2nd most popular browser next to Internet Explorer.  With its vast amount of features and plugins it’s easy to see why Firefox is pegged as the browser of the future.

While Firefox gets most of the attention it is Mozilla’s mobile browser that has high expectations.   Fennec, as it has been appropriately codenamed, is expected to completely change the way we view the web on our mobile devices.  Mozilla’s mobile browser has been in development for quite some time now and many are impatiently waiting for a release.  The delay is because Mozilla is looking to get it right and become the most powerful mobile browser we have seen which is great, there’s just one problem.  They won’t be supporting the BlackBerry anytime soon.

Gigaom recently did an interview with Mozilla’s CEO John Lilly to discuss the future of Fennec.  While they focused on other smartphones they did ask him if Fennec would be available for the BlackBerry.  He told them that they had no interest in developing it for the BlackBerry because it is a Java-based platform.  It appears that he also realizes how popular the BlackBerry is but it wouldn’t mean speeding up the process.

This is pretty disappointing news as I was fully expecting to be able to use Mozilla mobile on my phone.  It doesn’t mean that it will never happen but if it does we will have to wait a while.   The good news is that Adobe recently teamed up with RIM to bring flash support to the BlackBerry.  Also don’t forget about RIM’s acquisition of Torch Mobile and the new Webkit based browser that could challenge Fennec in the future.