GoMo News: Skyfire Rocket: mobile browser for operators and manufacturers

Skyfire is part of a rare breed - internet browsers made only for mobile devices.

Skyfire is part of a rare breed - internet browsers made only for mobile devices. Most other mobile browsers have an on-line parent, but Skyfire has no such safety net. In order to open a whole new business plateau, Skyfire has today announced what it calls a major business shift. It has released a new business-to-business product called Skyfire Rocket a new mobile browser service designed specifically for mobile operators and handset manufacturers.

What's Rocket?

First of all, let me tell you what Rocket ISN'T - a full mobile browser. What Rocket does is take a segment of the Skyfire mobile browser, and plug it into already existing mobile browsers. You see, one of the major strengths of the Skyfire mobile browser is its dedication to rich media. There are very few mobile browsers that handle video and Flash as well as Skyfire does. Indeed, Skyfire has been a champion of Flash on mobile for a long time now.

This capability to handle video and other big media files is the first thing that Skyfire is selling as "Rocket".

What else does it do?

Rich media is only one of the strengths of Skyfire. Another is data compression. When you view a video on Skyfire, you're not streaming it directly to your phone - instead, it goes through Skyfire first. The Skyfire server optimises it for your device, does most of the crunchy work and compresses the file. Then it sends the now-much-smaller file on to your phone. Since most phones download things so slowly, this actually speeds the entire process up. Not only that, but it reduces the amount of data traffic on the network - which is something that operators are very interested since people started browsing the full web over their mobiles.

This capability to compress rich media and reduce network traffic is the second thing Skyfire is selling.

Surely there's nothing else?

Actually- Skyfire claims that it can optimise video to run better on your mobile devices hardware - thereby increasing battery life for devices.

What we think?

This is actually a piece that slots into a little puzzle I'd been wondering about. Back at MWC, Skyfire CEO Jeffrey Glueck told GoMo News how Skyfire had bought a company called Kolbysoft that specialises in WebKit mobile browser development - and while he said this heralded a "major new direction" for Skyfire, he was cagey with the details. Add to this the releases we've seen for Symbian and Android as well this year, and you end up with Rocket. Skyfire is just making sure that its core technology offering works on as many software and hardware as possible - and now it's ready to sell that technology as Rocket.

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