Skyfire Labs, the startup behind a free web browser claimed to make browsing on a smartphone "just like browsing on a PC," reports receiving $13 million in capital. The money will facilitate international rollout of "Skyfire," currently still in a restricted private beta, says the company.
Announced at January's DEMO conference, the Windows Mobile-based Skyfire was touted as the first mobile browser on any platform to be fully compatible with technologies such as asynchronous Javascript and XML (AJAX), Java, and embedded Flash, It renders pages exactly as they would appear on a desktop computer, with all the expected content, including embedded Flash movies and other multimedia, the company says. Rather than being redirected to stripped-down mobile versions of popular websites, users can interact with the full-featured versions of sites such as YouTube, Myspace, and Facebook, Skyfire adds.
Skyfire's browser leans on pre-rendering proxy servers hosted by Skyfire to do the "heavy lifting" of error correction, document object modeling, and page rendering. The approach results in an experience more compatible with Web standards, while using fewer computing resources on the client, the company claims.
While specific details of the startup company's "patent-pending technology" have not been provided, proxy browsing is not itself a fundamentally new technology. For example, Opera Mini, written to run on Windows Mobile or any other smartphones that can run Java, uses proxies to translate Web pages into OBML (Opera Binary Markup Language), an optimized, compressed XML variant that requires less client-side processing and bandwidth than standard HTML, according to the company. Another mobile software company that pioneered the concept of proxy servers tidying up content for mobile browsers was Good Technology, recently acquired by Motorola.
However, claims CEO Nitin Bhandari, Skyfire's technology offers faster speed and superior scalability, allowing complicated pages to be viewed without bogging down either the phone or the company's servers. In addition, it offers thumbnail views, full-screen navigation, and near-instantaneous zooming in and out on Web pages, according to the company.
Skyfire rendering Google Maps, ESPN, and YouTube websites (left to right, respectively)
Skyfire also allows users to bookmark not only specific Web pages, but also specific areas on the pages themselves. This allows them to return to the content that interests them -- such as stock quotes, sports scores, or new blog postings -- without having to pan and zoom around a page, the company says.
Since its January announcement, Skyfire has received significant media attention and a variety of positive reviews. However, it has been made available only to an undisclosed number of users, via the company's private, U.S.-based beta program. Bhandari says, "With these funds, we are poised to bring Skyfire to a large number of handsets and launch outside the U.S. Now, we can extend our efforts to get Skyfire on a significant market share of smartphones."
The new $13 million in funding, obtained from Lightspeed Venture Partners plus previous investors Matrix Partners and Trinity Ventures, brings the total amount of money raised to $17.8 million, according to Skyfire. Jake Seid, managing director of Lightspeed, said, "Skyfire will fundamentally change the way people use their phones."
Skyfire browsing ESPN, YouTube, and other pages (click to play) Source: Skyfire
Further information
While the new funding apparently brings general availability of Skyfire one step closer, the company still provided no date for its public release. However, it says it is "continuing to roll out invites" to the private beta, which has currently reached version 0.6. Users of Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices can sign up for the program on the company's website, here.
