CrackBerry.com is reporting that RIM has acquired Torch Mobile, makers of the WebKit-powered Iris mobile browser.
Apple-backed WebKit is the open-source rendering engine behind Mac Safari and Google Chrome, which isn’t a very large segment, all told. Mobile WebKit, however, powers the portable world with the iPhone (and iPod touch) Safari, Google Android Chrome Lite, the Palm Pre/webOS browser, and some Nokia devices. Add BlackBerry to the mix and it pretty much looks like the mobile world vs. IE6 on Windows Phone — strangely inverse the desktop landscape where IE dominates and Firefox brings up the rear. (FireFox’s mobile Fennec browser is still in development).
It was just a couple weeks ago that RIM promised an iPhone-class browser from BlackBerry by next summer, and it looks like this might just give them one heckuva jumpstart in getting there.
Update: Engadget re-did the math and it looks like the iPhone 3G S is actually 21% faster than the Palm Pre (for now).
According to Anandtech, Dieter was spot on in his iPhone 3G S vs. Palm Pre browser speed test video. (as was our iPhone 3G S vs. iPhone 3G smackdown video)
The bigger story, of course, is not only do we have several great devices pushing competition and better serving users these days, but Mobile WebKit (the rendering engine behind Apple’s Safari, Google’s Chrome Lite, Palm Pre’s browser, and Nokia S60 (tip of the hat to Sascha Segan) has become the mobile internet platform.
That it’s relentlessly standards based, scales elegantly from desktop (where it ironically holds minimal share) to handset, and is continually being improved upon makes us especially happy for all concerned devices.
The intertubes are positively being flooded with what has to be some of the biggest browser news since Apple debuted MobileSafari on the iPhone: Google is getting in the game.
The advertising juggernaut has revealed that they’ll soon be releasing “Chrome” (Beta), built on the same Apple-contributed, open source WebKit framework that forms the foundation of Safari on OS X (and also powers Nokia and Adobe web rendering). Paul Thurrott secured the screenshots above (with accompanying analysis), and Apple Insider gets deep down into the guts of the thing, including it’s sandboxed tabs, “incognito” surf mode, and V8 Javascript engine. A Windows version will ship first, followed by Mac and Linux some point in the future.
Google, via referral fees for the search boxes built into Firefox and Safari, has bankrolled Mozilla, and to a lesser extent, Apple’s browser for years. Will creating Chrome and making a play for the browser and WebApp space turn some former allies into enemies? Google’s already begun down that path with the Android OS for handsets, and in the content space via Knol and YouTube (though they’ve thus far not managed to monetize it).
Looking for some Apple-like 360 degree spherical integration of their own, perhaps? And, as Google seems poised to become the next Microsoft, are we still safe in believing that whole “don’t be evil” motto?
