Mozilla shuts down Firefox for Windows Phone 7

Mozilla has announced it is shutting down development of its Firefox Mobile platform for Windows Phone 7 Series.

The company has a long history of coding its mobile browser for Microsoft's handset platform, but since the redevelopment of Windows Mobile, Mozilla has had to shut down its development.

This is due to the fact Microsoft is not supporting native third-party application development on its platform, concentrating instead on working with its own components like Internet Explorer for Mobile.

Heavy heart

Technical Leader of the Mozilla Mobile team Stuart Parmenter wrote on his blog that he hopes the project can be started up again in the future:

"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.

"While I hope that we do see Microsoft provide us with a way to build Firefox for Windows Phone 7, we will continue to focus on the things that we can control: building a great consumer product on both Android and Maemo."

On the plus side, Parmenter says all the knowledge gained will serve other platforms equally as well, but it shows the Microsoft is taking a very hard line over this reboot of its mobile service.

Via ZDNet