Mobile Browsers: Increased innovation?

Opera Mini made it into the Apple Store yesterday. People weren’t sure if it would make it in (as it duplicates functionality from Apple) but it did. This is good news. From playing with it myself, I feel a little like @gruber but what is more interesting to me is that there is room for innovation on the iPhone platform for browsers.

Firefox Mobile was exciting to me from a “what can a mobile browser do” perspective more than a “I get to use it” due to N900 and WinMo being the first platforms. I was excited to see that Dave Townsend grabbed the webOS PDK and started to play with a port:

firefoxwebos

The desktop has seen a rich space for innovation of browsing. By contrast we have seen awful browsers on mobile, and only recently have we seen quality on that side of the house. There has been innovation in the touch experience etc, but it feels like there is so much that we could do.

The richer UI of Firefox Mobile, plus Weave support, plus add-on support in general is fantastic.

Opera being smart about downscaling assets is fantastic.

But, there is more to be done, and hopefully we see Firefox on iPhone too!