Today we (Mozilla) are focusing our efforts in mobile on Linux and Windows Mobile devices. In Q3 2008 Symbian had 49.8% of the total smartphone sales (and 57% in Q2) according to Gartner compared to 11.1% for Windows Mobile and 7.2% for Linux. There are a few other platforms: iPhone, RIM and Android that have or are gaining market share, where we for technical or licensing reasons can’t be deployed. So in order for Mozilla to be relevant in the smartphone space we need to have a presence on the Symbian platform. We have worked with Symbian to understand and scope the size of the project and Symbian are supporting this with engineers to start working on this project so far. At the same time, several Symbian houses are interested in contributing work.
We have now kicked off a project in an incubator repository to get the development kick-started and are inviting everybody who is interested in seeing Fennec (Mobile Firefox) on Symbian to get involved. Harry Li already started some of this work, where he has ported NSPR to Symbian.
The current high-level plan (that we will revise as we move forward) is split into 5 phases:
- Fennec compiling and linking
- Planned completion date: end of January
- Basic/limited browsing possible
- Planned completion date: end of February
- Full browsing
- Planned completion date: end of April
- Fennec ready for initial testing
- Planned completion date: TBD
- Bug fixing and productisation of Fennec
- Planned completion date: TBD
Want to get involved? Take a look at the wiki or join us on irc on #mobile for general mobile discussions or #symbian for Symbian specific discussions.
In my next post I will write more details about how the actual work will be done and a more detailed breakdown of the schedule. Drop a comment if there is something else you would like to see me cover in the next post.
Update: The dates in the high-level plan are for 2009 (here’s’ looking at you Doug)