Bad News: Skyfire kills support for symbian and windows devices ~ Tech Boy Arena

Bad News: Skyfire kills support for Symbian and Windows devices

Bad news for Symbian and Windows Mobile users. Seems like Skyfire is killing the support for both OS. Heres the press release:

Skyfire 2.0 is the world’s first hybrid browser, using the best of the device’s native browser, and adding a cloud “booster engine” for extra features like video and social networking. It is our flagship go-forward product, as we’ve reported publicly for months, since our Android launch.

With that in mind, we are announcing that we will complete the phase out of our legacy v1.0 product on Windows Mobile and Symbian on December 31st, 2010 for remaining countries. This two-year old product used a “proxy browser” approach which is no longer our vision. It was a revolutionary product when introduced and offered for free, but the fast-moving mobile market has changed significantly since 2007, and as a small tech start-up, we need to keep innovating forward.

Our team took a hard look at where we could double down our limited resources on these “hockey stick” growth opportunities, and on Skyfire 2.0.

As a result, we have decided to stop all future development on the old “proxy” Skyfire 1.0 (including version 1.5) architecture, and focus on the 2.0 product, which is our future. With 2.0, Skyfire has introduced the first “hybrid browser” in the world, combining the best of native webkit rendering with the best of cloud web services, including our famed rich media engine, mash-ups, and more.

Yesterday we began notifying 1.0 users outside of North America and Western Europe that we will phase out the 1.0 service. Because 1.0 is only on Windows Mobile and Symbian, only those handsets are affected. Our 2.0 product is growing incredibly fast and continues worldwide. Skyfire 1.X will no longer be supported outside of North America and Western Europe effective July 1st, 2010.

We will bring Skyfire 2.0 to more operating systems over the next year, after Android and iPhone. The exact sequence will depend in part on discussions underway with potential OEM partners, to embed the SkyBar service on devices “out of the box,” as part of the default browser. Skyfire 2.0 is not a browser as much as it is a “cloud service” that boosts the performance and features of the native browser on any device. When you download Skyfire 2.0 as a consumer, you get everything your default browser would do, and more.

Skyfire has been a free, ad-supported app, and as such, it does factor into our decision that the cost of operating the 2.0 product runs a fraction of Skyfire 1.0 per user. 2.0 is not a proxy; only SkyBar services call on our cloud data centers, not the basic page load.

As an ad-supported app, we have seen that in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and other emerging markets, the mobile ad market and search monetization are very early stage. They are not mature enough to support the Skyfire 1.0 service operating cost. Skyfire had only officially-supported North America and Western Europe launches, but users in over 150 additional countries had “unofficially” downloaded the product. It was time to focus our resources on officially-supported countries, and on Skyfire 2.0 going forward.

We know this decision is an inconvenience to many Skyfire 1.5 users in emerging markets, and while it’s a free service, we appreciate how important and valuable Skyfire has become to people. We have read the many impassioned messages from users in affected countries, and the choice to focus on our flagship product does involve trade-offs which are never easy. In the book Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christianson argued the biggest mistake a company can make is straddling its original product and its next-gen product. With 2.0, Skyfire is going all out to support webkit, html5, and cutting-edge web services. In the long run, everyone will be better off if Skyfire focuses its resources on innovating our flagship product for years to come, bringing it to more users, across the most popular smartphone and multimedia phone platforms.

So stay tuned – there’s lots of good 2.0 product news to come….

- Jeff Glueck, CEO of Skyfire

Note: Skyfire 1.0 and 1.5 will remain available as a free service in the following countries after July 1st: United States, U.K., Canada, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Korea and Taiwan.