Skyfire Making an Android Browser, Buys Kolbysoft to Get Started

You probably don’t recognize the name Kolbysoft, but you will most likely recognize their product if you use Android. They make the Steel browser that can be downloaded from the Market, one of the first 3rd party browsers for the Android OS.

Well, Skyfire, makers of the Skyfire browser, one of the first full flash browsers for the Windows Mobile and Symbian OS’s, has decided to purchase Kolbysoft in order to get their foot in the door for their browser on the Android OS.

As someone who has used Windows Mobile phones in the past, Skyfire was my favorite browser. It was a little buggy, but was the only one that would let me use any website I wanted because of the way it renders pages. Skyfire basically loads the internet on a server somewhere and then just transmits the images to your phone. In this way, the internet you view is quicker and displays much more like a real OS browser (since its using a powerful server to load everything first then just displaying the results on your phone).

I’m excited about this acquisition and the idea of a Skyfire Android Browser since a nice robust browser is something I fell the Android OS is in need of (as are most OS’s don’t get me wrong, but with all the developers for Android, I’m surprised we haven’t seen one yet).

Anyone else familiar with Skyfire and happy to see it being brought over?

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