Skyfire may return to BlackBerry but do we even need or want it?

on 18 Nov 2010 05:24 PM

Skyfire, the 3rd party web browser that began their alpha and beta testing for BlackBerry only to abandon it a little while later, is once again considering bringing their services back to the BlackBerry Platform. While it's not exactly an actual confirmation that they will start up testing again, the fact it got mentioned is something to consider.

We do expect to bring Skyfire 2.0 to additional platforms, and have begun discussions with some carriers and OEMs to decide which will be our next OS. Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 and Nokia’s MeeGo platform are both shaping up as platforms with a lot of potential and the recent launch of the new Blackberry OS 6 with a WebKit browser core makes for interesting potential for a future release of Skyfire 2.0. We value feedback from our users, so please let us know what platform you would like to see Skyfire on next and just as importantly let your wireless carrier know that you want Skyfire!

Rather funny that Skyfire now wants to rethink their time and effort investment for BlackBerry. It's pretty much coming at a time that could end up being one of transition for BlackBerry and Research In Motion. If in fact QNX OS ends up making its way to BlackBerry smartphones one has to even wonder if Skyfire would be relevant. They're version 2.0 offering brings full support for html5, offline browsing, javascript, WebKit, and full-screen video. All of which could be built right into the QNX OS and ultimately the browser anyways. Fool me once Skyfire, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Besides, Skyfire would need some server upgrades first before taking on an influx of BlackBerry users as we see it.

Source: Skyfire

Filed Under: News & Rumors; Tags: Skyfire, webkit browser

49 Comments

Posted by jorGeorge Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

Forget them. How long has that browser been in the works? One of their builds got leaked so they went into the corner and started crying. Now they want back in the game. Well too damn late as far as I'm concerned. That browser better be the second coming of Jesus for me to be interested.

Posted by ODAAT Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

Ha ha. Their browser was nowhere near the second coming of Jesus on my last Nokia. Not even on a par with Bolt from memory, and this wasn't that long ago. Opera mini may be a lost cause but Bolt seems to continue making headway on BB, so what's the point, even for OS5 users?

Posted by papped Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

Considering they had a couple years since WM + S60 to ramp up the servers AND both of those userbases likely decreased an insane amount, yet still couldn't handle the iphone initial influx, color me pessimistic....

Posted by xDAKx Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

They alienated any potential fan base they had when they decided to abandon the platform when they could have been highly relevant to the BlackBerry community, now they realise that BlackBerry will likely grow quicker than it did before, and become increasingly "hip" they want back in.

I'd be surprised to see anyone give them any serious consideration, and would be shocked if their product was able to come anywhere near what we get out of the box in OS6.

Posted by BBThemes Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

users of OS6 / OS5 will still want it even though it may not serve a need on QNX i guess, however seeing what happened when they released their iphone app and the servers died within a day (because jobs says they dont need flash lol) does raise quiestions over wether their servers can cope with adding more platforms?

Posted by Umedon Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

I won't hold my breath, and by the time there is a usable skyfire browser on the BB platform I will have my Playbook, and will not need them.

Posted by jfs101 Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

Skyfire? We don't need no stinkin' Skyfire!!!

Posted by dlucero86 Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

I don't think RIM is in a position to reject developers. You should be happy anyone is interested in developing in this os.

Skyfire developers target users who are looking to do more than check email and synchronize all messages into one inbox.
Hopefully OS6 is attractive enough to developers so you don't have $5 and $10 crappy apps.

Posted by jfs101 Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

Skyfire can turn our BBs into planes that fly us to our own private island or print money (remember the best buy guy?).

If you don't remember how skyfire decided to drop us from their radar, than look around this site for it. Thanks, but noooo thanks.

Posted by Revyrah Friday, Nov 19, 2010 555 days ago

...the white SkyFire....with the bigger GBs... LOL. JK,

Honestly I don't care if SkyFire comes along now or ever. They would've been crucial to BB back then, made a bad business decision that will cost them in the long run and essentially make them irrelevant unless they make huge improvements that bring them above what QNX has to offer.

Now if we're talkin using SkyFire on the OS 5 phones, feel free. Get to it because I'm not a big fan of Opera or Bolt.

Posted by Xopher Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

Maybe not as a viable option as it could have been. If they ever came out with an OS 5.0 version, that might bridge the gap to BB6.

Posted by six4seven Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

I had this for my i4 and it blows!!!

QNX browser will blow SkyFire out of the water!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SKyFire turned their back on the BlackBerry community and I say we do the same!!!!!!!

Fu*kkk you SKYFIRE

Posted by R1cowl Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

Too late. The only feature that would be interesting is the flash and with the playbook around the corner and new phone to likely follow we will get full flash. We were on board before you gave us the finger.

Posted by luqman24 Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

I do! i'm still rockin the Bold 9000 and OS 5 proudly :D

Posted by zoom--zoom Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

Im sorry for skyfire but i very happy with my browser and OS6
and yea why we need them now when we have flash ?

Thank but no. to late for you skyfire

Posted by TLS2000 Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

No Blackberry has Flash.

Posted by elmorro Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

Mine does via uZard

Posted by TLS2000 Friday, Nov 19, 2010 555 days ago

Support for Flash video only != Flash support.

Posted by zoom--zoom Friday, Nov 19, 2010 555 days ago

think again please right now non of BB have but from now on they will have w8 till they relies BB-PB :) and trust me from there on all of the BB phones will have flash integrate from 2011.

Posted by TLS2000 Friday, Nov 19, 2010 555 days ago

Your original comment spoke as if Blackberry phones currently have Flash. They do not. Yes, an unreleased product has it, but it has not found it's way onto a Blackberry smart phone yet.

Skyfire said that they would look into supporting Blackberry again once OS6 was released. I'll probably never have their browser on my phone, but that doesn't mean I don't think there's a market for them.

Posted by aubinhick990 Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

If anyone from SkyFire reads the comments, I don't think they'll want to develop.
Regardless, you **** your users over with such a brutal message...we don't forget.

Posted by alby4ever Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

It's funny how people forget why Skyfire stopped developing for BB: RIM provided a piss-poor platform for software developers. It wasn't their fault at all. In fact, the blame probably belongs to the users who consistently defend RIM's past poor decisions and strategies.

Obviously RIM has been making strides in this department, but we've yet to see anything significant from 3rd party developers. And don't act like the Playbook is going to be RIM's savior. By the time it comes out, there will be the iPad 2 and several high-end Android 3.0 tablets out.

For this supposed "mature" portion of smartphone users, you all sure tend to act very immature and jaded (while choosing to be close-minded).

Posted by ODAAT Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

Whilst we may be jaded, we also don't need your pity. Why do people (trolls?) think that we all secretly want to buy iphones and androids instead? I can't speak for anyone else but my BlackBerry is brilliant. I have all the third party apps I need, including browsers. I know this cos I made sure they were available before I bought the phone. And we also have a brilliant community on the forums which can help me with any other issues. I won't bore you with the million other reasons I prefer BB, but suffice to say, I don't regret my decision to buy one in the slightest.

Posted by Nesquik Friday, Nov 19, 2010 555 days ago

Very well put. you got heart man =] and yes we really don't need their pity. we have enough to work with and then some. there's a reason why blackberry's exist and people own them: they're fantastic and always will be.

Posted by androidsux Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

And it would most likely be worse with blackberries. I don't know what they have said or done to blackberry but who cares? They are not needed.

Posted by zombiesattach Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

lets be honest it never hurts to have more choices. Few, if any of us, would be spending time hunched over writing code or losing money. So we really have lost nothing if they fail and if they succeed a lot of people could benefit. Just regress to being a five year old again. When someone takes their toys and goes home one day you don't shun him the next day when he comes back to play.

Posted by androidsux Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

If this were face book I'd give this comment a thumbs up.

Posted by duck383 Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

stay were you were dont need or want you...........

Posted by JD914 Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

RIM/Blackberry has become a third rate company and can use all the help they can get.

Posted by renegade37918 Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

you turn your back on us and we really dont need what you promised now. .... os 6 browser is just fine and dandy..

Posted by silly_walk Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

"They're version 2.0 offering brings full support for html5, offline browsing"

Their, not they're.

Posted by wyldemf Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

"Like"

Posted by sabesh Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

Not sure that the point of this article is. So, skyfire is "thinking" of releasing a BB browser, but it's vaporware at this time!

Posted by BBB78 Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

what about a dual processor in my phone?

Posted by Revyrah Friday, Nov 19, 2010 555 days ago

Look at the pretty birds...

Posted by wyldemf Thursday, Nov 18, 2010 555 days ago

Add this app to the Socialscope file. Myth.

Posted by ReccaKun Friday, Nov 19, 2010 555 days ago

im happy with my native browser. so I'll pass... and if I want to use a third party browser I rather use BOLT who kept their promise and kept working on their browser even if RIM didn't provided them much. I would gladly support BOLT over skyfire.

Posted by xeju Friday, Nov 19, 2010 555 days ago

It's the one and only reason anyone would be interested in Skyfire. If RIM integrates Flash with QNX, no one cares about Skyfire. If Skyfire does it first, they become the awesome, go-to, browser app... UNTIL QNX integrates Flash. Then they're done. I'll wait for something native, mostly because these asshats abandoned RIM devices until all the infrastructure was there already.

Posted by nls Friday, Nov 19, 2010 555 days ago

...than I want it.

Posted by element526 Friday, Nov 19, 2010 555 days ago

If Skyfire could get past the battery and memory killing issues it could be a good browser. With the versions they put out prior to halting development there were issues with both. Maybe the difference in the OS from 4.6 as tested to 5.0 and 6.0 have helped alleviate some of these problems.
No matter what another option is always a good thing.

Posted by Matt J Friday, Nov 19, 2010 555 days ago

Time to move on. With BB6 and QNX eventually, I wouldn't waste my time. They had their chance.

Posted by spark09223 Friday, Nov 19, 2010 555 days ago

I don't see why I wouldn't want it on OS5... IMHO, the more options the better.

Posted by Bazza1 Friday, Nov 19, 2010 555 days ago

For those of us running something earlier than OS6 (and it seems unlikely RIM will offer its browser to earlier OSs) or not immediately planning to jump to QNX, the possibility of another alternate browser does appeal.

Granted, Skyfire may need to do some work to be useful to us, but having tried (with - ahem - 'mixed' success) OperaMini and Bolt, Skyfire isn't the only one who needs to work on their browser and infrastructure - while RIM's browser for OS5 and earlier is simply an embarrassment.

Options out there? Yes, please.

Posted by wcmarchese Friday, Nov 19, 2010 555 days ago

I will say this, I have followed them for a long time, introduced a lot of people to the Windows mobile version, and really thought they were going to come through for the Blackberry, but no, they didn’t. This is one of the major reasons I left Blackberry to go to Android—it was the last straw.
When they posted that they were stopping work on the Blackberry version because of “inconsistent APIs” and such, I just became so frustrated and figured that I was going to just move on rather than wait for the Blackberry 6 version.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that when Skyfire says they are thinking about Blackberry, they mean OS6, not the older versions. Those were the versions that they couldn’t work with, or abandoned.
Now, another thing to think about, after seeing what they did with Iphone, and possible Android, I think they are going to charge for this browser.
And I know it’s been said probably a thousand times, if not just inside everyone’s mind, but WHO WILL NEED SKYFIRE IF YOU HAVE FLASH???
If they charge for Android, that will be ridiculous, being the browser does full flash as it is. The only reason I use Skyfire is for that occasional video that doesn’t have a mobile version so I can stream out on my EVO 4G via HDMI to my flat-screen. I can live without that…
The thing that was good about Skyfire was the fact that you could do something that you couldn’t do normally on your phone, now that Flash is coming out, why would you need them? The native browsers on the new phones/Oss will have security and such and do all processing on the phone, while with Skyfire you have to go through their servers.
The only way they would be useful is if they put out their proxy browser, or such, and let you see the web they way you used to be able to, fully. Silverlight, Flash, etc.
Throw into the mix that there are so many third-party browsers out there anyway, why would you even need Skyfire?
Right now, on some of the older Blackberries, not too old, you can basically use a browser that is probably what Skyfire would have been if they released it. It’s called Uzard. (and you can even play Facebook games on it) It’s slow, but it does flash and all others, it’s a proxy browser.
So in this day and age of Flash on your phone, and third-party browsers bringing plug-ins (FREE browsers), do we really need Skyfire anymore???

Oh, and one other thing. On the first proxy version of Skyfire, you had to sign up and you had an ID and all. It was more personal, more inclusive. You felt as though you were in a club. This is another thing that they have taken away in their 2.0 versions. Just a little thing, but it’s enough to separate your browser from the rest.

But whatever lol. Rant over.

WCM