Skyfire, the mobile web browser that allows users to experience the web as they would on a PC, has secured $13 Million in Series B Funding. The application has a waiting list that amounts to the publicity Gmail received with its invite system. Here's a closer look at a next generation web browser that users should look forward to.
The new funding round takes Skyfire's total raise to date up to $17.8m. Currently in private beta for Windows Mobile, Skyfire will use the funding to expand their browser to even more people on more platforms. The funding was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, and included previous investors Matrix Partners and Trinity Ventures. The funds will be used towards further rollout and distribution of the mobile browser and will add Jake Seid, Managing Director of Lightspeed, to its Board of Directors.
Skyfire offers users a web experience akin to a PC with fast speeds and support for web technologies that most mobile handsets lacks. With Skyfire you can visit sites such as ReadWriteWeb, Youtube, Last.fm, CNN, and more just like you would on your PC. Skyfire loaded every website I threw at it without a hitch. I was even able to read my feeds in Google Reader and use features such as sharing an item and staring an item just like I would on my PC.
Usability
Navigating Skyfire is easy and intuitive. The homepage features three tabs that puts everything you need at your fingertips such as featured sites and sections, bookmarks, search, and your browsing history. The integrated search bar provides results from Yahoo and Google with links to view images, videos, and maps of your search results. Best of all, switching between each search engine was quick. All of these features were easy to use.
The zoom feature was a breath of fresh air from Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE). When you first head to a site, you'll see a full view of the with the option to zoom in with your keypad. A small cursor box will appear as you move the keypad around. Once you've selected a spot to zoom in on, Skyfire immediately renders a better view of your selection. From this view, you can interact with the page by selecting links, playing videos and more. When moving the mouse to scroll around the page, Skyfire automatically optimizes the other portions of the site for maximum viewing experience. Zooming out to fullview was as simple as pressing my keypad down again.
Audio and Video
Audio and video streams worked flawlessly on the browser. After testing the application against Youtube, I tried a bigger service: Hulu (Hulu coverage). Video playback was a little choppy which was expected. However, the performance far surpassed my expectations of the browser possibly choking and crashing.
Skyfire is a free downloadable browser that aims to be the Safari of Windows Mobile among other mobile platforms.Right now, the application only supports Windows Mobile 5 and 6 handsets, both touchscreen and non-touchscreen. Skyfire supports web technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, Ajax, QuickTime, Java, Windows Media, and plans to expand with each new release of the application.
One problem that many users may be concerned with is how Skyfire renders web pages to effectively deliver them to your handset for the best browsing experience. Its proprietary technology is server assisted and moves the heavy work to a server to keep the client's performance high. Essentially, this amounts to your data being stored in the hands of Skyfire. While I've had nothing short of a great experience with Skyfire, I recommend you choose carefully what sites and data you enter into the browser.
The biggest drawback I experienced with Skyfire was its limited customization options. There's no way to change what's listed in the 'Featured' tab. We'd appreciate a way to add a list of a user's most visited sites instead of always heading to our bookmarks to grab them. For bookmarks, PIE allows for users to categorize their favorite sites into folders.Skyfire doesn't support this option.
When comparing Skyfire to Opera Mobile there were four things that I could not do with Skyfire:
While the first three may not be necessary for some, importing bookmarks from PIE should be a top priority for Skyfire.
With the new funding round, Skyfire should now be able to open up its beta a little more. Users that signed up before March 1st can look forward to an invite very soon. If you registered after March 1st you'll have to wait until later this summer. Future plans for the mobile browser also include launching on the Symbian S60 mobile platform. Blackberry and Palm support are not in their immediate future plans. As for the iPhone, they're waiting on a call from Steve. Welcome to the waiting list on that one.
Comments
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Opera mini too promises all that Skyfire has promised will do. Opera mini has topped more than 45 million downloads. It will be interesting to see how the mobile browser wars pan out. Will look forward to an RWW post in few months time comparing Opera Mini and Skyfire.
Posted by: Puneeth | May 28, 2008 7:20 AM
I've been using it for awhile and have been fairly impressed. My speed with streaming video has been a little hit or miss. But such is the nature of mobile. No mobile browsing experience is perfect (including Safari.) It's always going to be a compromise when you take something intended for 17"+ monitors and then try to cram it on a ~3" screen.
Either way, it's nice to see Windows Mobile finally getting a new generation of more robust browsers. I've also been using the Opera 9.5 alpha/beta which is extremely nice. The older version I have still has a few bugs which need to be ironed out. But the speed and interface is second to none. The Netfront 3.5 preview was also very nice and very feature-packed (although the menus/interface needs some major tweaking IMO.)
I think most people with smartphones will still prefer a client-driven browsing experience. But Opera Mini and others have shown there is a space for proxy-based browsing. This is definitely one of the strongest entrants in that area thus far.
Ironically though, I consume most of my 'web' based content on my phone via a far more efficient feed reader these days.
Posted by: RS | May 28, 2008 7:28 AM
Did try a beta version on a HTC Touch but before they supported touchsreen, allthough I was missing that feature back then I was overall happy with the performance and user interface/Design.
I dont see to much a problem with handling the optimizing for the device server side, after all it is the exact same thing Opera Mini does and it leaves the end-user with better performance and not to forget is saves you money on your phone bill (Data usage)just want to know more about the company behind this before I trust my websurfing with them and a privacy policy where they refrain from selling my info.
Anyone knows if the server side software used is SSL compatible?
Now one thing that does bother me is that everyone in the mobile browser game seems to focus on Symbian, iPhone, and Windows phone while these already comes with fine browsers.
So for business sake, try to look at some J2ME like Opera Mini and you will gain a much larger market.
Another aspect of this is, if you want to go international most handsets in example India, Thailand, Vietnam and other of the high mobile penetration growth countries are J2ME enable while not so many are Symbian/Windows and it is perhaps those people on those areas with no internet/PC that would be you main target? And doing a J2ME version it could still work fine on a Windows/Symbian.
Keep up the good work
Posted by: Allan Rasmussen | May 28, 2008 7:38 AM
Man, I wish I had a Windows Mobile-enabled smartphone!
When I got my Sidekick 3 a year ago, it seemed like a reasonable choice. But with the rate of change these days, I'm really regretting it.
Posted by: J. Phil | May 28, 2008 3:54 PM
great article! i'm looking forward to sampling the browser.
Posted by: JNez | May 28, 2008 5:21 PM
Great article! Hope you don't mind but I sampled it to use on our blog - http://blog.omio.com/technology-news/skyfire-%e2%80%93-the-next-big-thing-in-mobile-web-browsing/.
Can't wait for this to be released.
Posted by: Kate | May 29, 2008 1:23 AM