I just read on CrackBerry that RIM has acquired Torch Mobile, a company that develops a WebKit browser for mobile devices.
This browser, Iris, sounds interesting. Here is Torch Mobile’s description of it:
The Iris Browser is an advanced, high-performance and versatile application that is specifically designed to function in resource-constrained environments. It brings the full Web experience to mobile phones, set-top boxes, mobile Internet devices, portable media players, Ultra-Mobile PCs and other embedded devices – in a fast and user-friendly manner.
If RIM is planning to replace the current BlackBerry brower with this WebKit browser, it would be a major benefit to BlackBerry users. Apple, Google, and Nokia have all embraced WebKit as the backbone for the browser’s of their smartphone operating systems, and many mobile web applications have been optimized to work well with WebKit. This move would give BlackBerry users a much enhanced web browsing experience and open up many more websites and web apps to them. Hopefully this is RIM’s plan for Torch Mobile’s technology.
With RIM onboard with WebKit, this leaves Windows Mobile and the Zune pretty lonely with their Internet Explorer based built-in browsers.
Here is a video of Torch Mobile’s current version of the Iris browser for Windows Mobile: