Mozilla Firefox headed to Android later this year

Mozilla Fennec

In an interview with TechRadar, Mozilla Vice president of mobile, revealed that Firefox Mobile for Android is headed to Google Android, confirming earlier rumours. That’s the good news; the bad news is that those rumoured February dates are a pipe dream. Instead, Mozilla is aiming for a release sometime later this year.

Sullivan explained that much of the delay had to do with platform differences:

“Android has been built on a Java platform, whereas [Firefox Mobile] is based on C and C++ code. Until last year when [the Open Handset Alliance] released the NDK (native development kit) which allowed native code as part of the app, it was simply impossible.”

Sullivan also talked about Firefox Mobile for Windows Mobile which is stuck in an alpha release. In light of the Windows Phone 7 announcement this week, it appears that Mozilla will have to review its strategy to decide whether to target Windows Mobile 6.5 or 7.

Read more about this story