I'm a big fan of Mozilla, and its exciting to see that they're working on a mobile version of Firefox. A list of reasons to begin developing for the Firefox Mobile Browser over at Schrep's blog.
The original reason I started using Firefox was to have access to tabbed browsing and a more secure browser. With IE7, tabbed browsing is available, and now it's really just a stylistic preference. The difference seems to be in the open source nature of the Firefox Mobile project. They want companies to invest in the new browser, and as their money is ad-based, can afford not to lock it down.
- A large portion of the world accesses the Internet from mobile devices, and this will become increasingly true over time (mobile devices outsell computers 20-1). Each Firefox install is an individual choice by a person to download something that didn't ship by default on their computer. Why not offer that option for mobile devices?
- Firefox the most popular open-source browser on the planet with > 100 million active users. Bringing Firefox add-ons, the Mozilla platform (including XUL), open source, and a large and passionate community to the closed and fragmented mobile platform will do the world some serious good.
- Firefox and Mozilla give device manufacturers the best of both worlds: shared investment in the core open-source project plus the flexibility they need to customize the browser for their devices.
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