Back in February, Mozilla released Firefox Mobile for the Maemo platform and was hard at work on a version for Windows Mobile. Now, almost two months later, the browsing giant is throwing in the towel. Here"s what Mozilla Mobile Team Technical Lead, Stuart Parmenter had to say on his blog.
"While we think Windows Phone 7 looks interesting and has the potential to do well in the market, Microsoft has unfortunately decided to close off development to native applications. Because of this, we won’t be able to provide Firefox for Windows Phone 7 at this time. Given that Microsoft is staking their future in mobile on Windows Mobile 7 (not 6.5) and because we don’t know if or when Microsoft will release a native development kit, we are putting our Windows Mobile development on hold."
Without a way for Mozilla to build for Windows Phone 7, which is the future of Windows in the mobile spectrum, the company sees no point in spending the money and resources to continue the project. For now, Firefox for Windows Mobile will be put on the back-burner, hopefully to be re-evaluated at a time when Microsoft releases a proper native development kit. Until then, Mozilla plans to focus its time and effort on the Android and Maemo platforms.