We’ve written about Skyfire before. Plenty of times, actually. It’s the smartphone browser that, by way of data-compression proxies (and tiny wizards), can chew through Flash video and other Rich media formats on Android, Windows Mobile, and S60 handsets. Thus far, Skyfire has been an entirely business-to-consumer operation.
Today, Skyfire makes the good ol’ jump to business-to-business with the launch of Skyfire Rocket.
Rocket comes in two parts: Rocket Device Client and Rocket Cloud Platform.
To my understanding, Rocket Device Client is essentially a white-labeled version of Skyfire 2.0. Debuted on Android just weeks ago, Skyfire 2.0 differs from versions prior in a few major ways: it’s build on WebKit, only video data is sent through Skyfire’s data conversion proxy, and that happens only once the user specifically selects a video to view from the “Skybar”.
The Rocket Platform, on the other hand, is for carriers and manufacturers who want what Skyfire has to offer, but want it in their own browser. In other words, Skyfire is licensing out the video streaming, data compression, and content recommendation tech they’ve built to any third-party willing to cough up the dough.
It’ll be interesting to see how this one goes. Smartphone platforms tend to come with their own browsers, with OEMs and carriers only supplanting the built-in offering when it’s.. well, when it’s pretty terrible. Will this see enough adoption to warrant its creation?