Mobile Firefox nears launch

"Our goal is to have a release candidate next week," said Jay Sullivan, Mozilla's vice president of mobile. "If things go smoothly, we'll have a (final) version out in the next few weeks," with the debut planned for this year, he added.

The first mobile Firefox version will run on Nokia's powerful but relatively obscure new N900, a $569 hybrid computer and mobile phone that uses Nokia's Linux-based Maemo operating system. A Windows Mobile of mobile Firefox is set to arrive next year, and Mozilla has begun working on an Android version now that Google released a native developer kit.

Firefox has one big thing going for it, though: it's a close relative of the PC-based browser that today is used by about a quarter of people on the Web.

For more, read "First Mobile Firefox enters home stretch" on CNET News.