Short Nerd Chief

In advance of Demo 2008, Skyfire Labs (formerly known as DVC Labs) has announced a new mobile browser, also known as Skyfire.  The browser application will work similarly to Microsoft’s Deepfish or Opera Mini, in which web pages will first be processed by Skyfire’s proxy servers before being sent to a user’s mobile device.  This could speed up page loads, but more importantly will allow use of AJAX, Flash, Java and audio and video in a way not supported by other mobile browsers (even the iPhone).  Here’s how Skyfire describes it:

Today at the DEMO 08 conference, Skyfire unveiled a new mobile browser that makes browsing on a smartphone just like browsing on a PC. For the first time ever, smartphone users can experience the “real Web” to access and interact with any Web site built with any Web technology, including dynamic Flash, advanced Ajax, Java and more – at the same speeds they are accustomed to on their PC. With this free downloadable browser, users can finally watch videos from the real YouTube, stay connected with their friends on the full-feature PC versions of Facebook and MySpace, and listen to any Web music service like Last.fm. Before Skyfire, users painfully waited for these Flash and Ajax-heavy sites to render – often resulting in error messages or crashes.

You can’t download it yet, although you can sign up for the private beta list.  There is a demo of the interface on youtube (see below).  Skyfire has also posted some images of the browser showing popular websites.  Here are some side by side comparisons of Skyfire and Pocket Internet Explorer (on my Motorola Q9h).  Comparing some of the sites isn’t very easy - many of the sites default to loading a mobile version of the page, and there’s no simple way in IE to overrule that browser detection.

ESPN:

Facebook:

Google Maps:

Obviously, Skyfire looks like it would be a vast improvement, although improving on IE isn’t hard, which is why the Moto Q comes with Opera Mobile as the default browser instead of IE.  Even Opera Mobile has its faults, however. It doesn’t zoom and scroll the way Skyfire promises to  or the way its sibling Opera Mini does. It doesn’t do Flash or Java, either.

With all the promise of Skyfire, I have two primary concerns based on currently available information:

• A proxy browsing experience is only as good as the proxy servers.  Opera Mini has scaled very well, serving more than 1 billion pages a month with no real noticeable drag.  Deepfish, on the other hand, scaled badly and now appears to be abandoned.
• Related to the first (servers cost money) is what the business model for Skyfire will be.  The company is looking for partners in three areas: OEM bundling of Skyfire with hardware or other services, branded editions of Skyfire with custom logos, start pages and links, and in-browser advertising.  None of these seem like very easy sells.  Will the carriers really embrace a technology that relies on third-party proxy servers? Will they be willing to install and maintain their own servers for Skyfire? Neither seems particularly likely, as the carriers like to maintain control and actively block use of browsers like Opera Mini.  Advertising seems even worse — users dislike advertising, and with only a 320×240 QVGA screen to work with, devoting very many pixels to ads would be self-defeating.

Proxy servers are probably the best answer to mobile browsing on basic hardware, but a standalone company seems ill-suited to providing the infrastructure.  opera can do it, as they make money from Opera Mobile, they make money from embedded Opera and they make money from advertising on their own sites.  Microsoft could do it, even if they show little interest at the moment in Deepfish.  It’s not clear if Skyfire can do it, but I wish them luck.

[via about a bazillion blog posts, although the first was at Engadget]