Those with a Nokia or Samsung phone that’s running on Symbian and are looking forward to the Mobile Firefox browser may not need to wait longer than April 2009.

Based on the latest info floating around the internet, the Mobile FireFox and Symbian teams are collaborating on one that would be released to the public in April. They’re likewise planning to release a basic version in February 2009, likely as a sort of 'beta' product that can be used to gather feedback on its performance. While versions for other platforms are also in the works, it won’t be surprising at all if Symbian gets more attention than the others. As Christian Sejersen recently admitted in his blog, Symbian has superiority in the market.

In Q3 2008 Symbian had 49.8% of the total smartphone sales (and 57% in Q2) according to Gartner compared to 11.1% for Windows Mobile and 7.2% for Linux. There are a few other platforms: iPhone, RIM and Android that have or are gaining market share, where we for technical or licensing reasons can’t be deployed. So in order for Mozilla to be relevant in the smartphone space we need to have a presence on the Symbian platform.

Now that we’ve got an ETA for Mobile FireFox on Symbian, I wonder when the Windows Mobile and Linux version will become available. Any hints or tips would be greatly appreciated.

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