You might want to take a seat, BlackBerry fans. Remember all those pictures and details about the BlackBerry port of the Skyfire browser that leaked way back in April of last year? Those are all you’re going to get for a while.
Skyfire CEO Jeff Glueck has just stepped out to announce that development of the BlackBerry port has been put on an indefinite hiatus, with the Android port becoming their primary focus for now.
“Why?! Why?!”, cry BlackBerry users everywhere.
Here’s why: Skyfire feels like they can develop more efficiently on Android than they can on BlackBerry OS (gently calling the latter “not as favorable for cutting-edge application development”), and that Android is simply a more viable platform at the given time. Given the fact that Android is exploding onto more and more handsets each week and RIM is already working on their own browser that touts many of the same data-optimizing features that Skyfire would (save, presumably, the Flash/Silverlight/etc. support that really define Skyfire) have, we can’t say we disagree.
All hope is not lost, however; Glueck says they’ll be keeping a watchful eye on the upcoming release BlackBerry OS 6.0 later this year, with hopes of continue developing on the platform at a later date.
