Skyfire, the developer of the mobile browser of the same name, has announced the launch of version 1.0, which is available for free download at get.skyfire.com. Over 1 million consumers have installed and used the Skyfire browser since its launch five months ago, which the company says makes it the fastest growing downloadable mobile browser in North America.
Skyfire says it remains committed to providing everything the PC web has to offer in a mobile experience with blazing fast speeds. For the first time, it says, consumers can use their phones to watch any web video and live events, stay connected with friends, share web pages instantly, and use the full-featured PC versions of their favourite websites. The browser supports popular web standards and plug-ins such as Flash 10, Silverlight 2, Ajax and Javascript, so that rich media on websites runs on phones just like the PC.
Skyfire users can customize the start page with RSS feeds from their favourite websites. In addition, they can integrate their Facebook and Twitter accounts to import status updates and tweets, and easily publish their status to these networks. Skyfire is the only mobile browse to share and publish any web page to Facebook and Twitter networks with one click.
Improvements specific to the Skyfire 1.0 release include enhanced navigation, zooming and interaction, as well as faster launch, power optimization, and new search functionality. Skyfire says the focus of this latest release was helping users get to the content they want more quickly. As the new version starts-up, users can type a search query or URL in the Superbar while Skyfire is connecting to the network. After a web page loads, smooth scrolling and zooming helps users navigate the page more quickly.
We were absolutely floored by the initial response to the Skyfire Beta, says Skyfire CEO,  Nitin Bhandari. We knew people wanted the PC web on their phones and this was clearly confirmed in the significant user growth and engagement during our beta period. We achieved our goal of delivering both a better and faster mobile browsing experience. However, bringing it to over 1 million consumers exceeded our expectations of a beta, especially since they were all acquired organically by buzz and word of mouth.
Skyfire runs on more than 70% of the worldwide installed base of Smartphones, based on figures from a March 2009 Gartner report. These include devices from HTC, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Palm, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, T-Mobile, to name a few, plus newer models with VGA and WVGA screen resolutions, all running on Windows Mobile or Symbian platforms.
Skyfire also plans to bring the browser to more Smartphones, and recently launched a Private Closed Alpha program for the BlackBerry platform. The company will announce plans for a Public BlackBerry Beta at a later date.