Tag: Skyfire
Opera Buys Skyfire Labs For Up To $155 Million
Opera’s biggest purchase yet?
Skyfire Labs, a company that raised $23 million just over a year ago, has been acquired by Opera Software in a deal said to be worth up to $155 million in both cash and stock. This includes an upfront payment of $50 million and performance based payments over the next 3 years.
While it’s been a while since we heard about Skyfire’s web browser, it looks like this wasn’t the only driving force behind the acquisition.
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Skyfire Receives Additional $8 Million In Funding
As if $23 million were not enough, Skyfire, a company behind mobile web browser for Android and iOS, has raised another $8 million in funding.
Although users can download Skyfire for free, which they did more than 12 million times, a video optimization feature dubbed as “Skyfire Video License” will cost you $2.99.
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Skyfire to Kill Windows Mobile and Symbian Products
With the decreasing popularity of Windows Mobile and Symbian platforms, Skyfire has decided to do some changes for its own eco system.
Starting from December 31, 2010, Skyfire will stop supporting its 1.0 browser for both Windows Mobile and Symbian devices.
What does that mean?
Flash and Silverlight is no more, as its proxy servers will be shut down.
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Skyfire Cashes in Almost 1 Million Dollars
Might make Opera jealous.
With all the “problems” that plagued Skyfire for the iOS launch, the numbers are in.
According to the MobileCrunch post, a company behind mobile web browser Skyfire has sold more than 300 000 copies for their first weekend.
If we do the math:
300,000++ * $2.99 = ~$900,000
Now, Skyfire will obviously not receive all that cash, as Apple wants their cut as well (30%, if no exclusive deals were made).
That still leaves the company with more than 600,000 USD to spend on candies and chocolate.
Skyfire: Now You See Me, Now You Don’t
Apparently, recently released Skyfire for the iOS became top selling app in just over 5 hours and was doing so well that its publishers had to actually remove it from the app store.
According to the blog post, it far exceeded their initial expectations and was too much for the servers to handle.
When can you expect it to re-appear?
As soon as they increase the capacity of servers. No ETA yet.
Apple Approves Skyfire, Brings Flash Support
Well, what do you know; Apple has just approved the Skyfire mobile browser for the iOS.
According to CNNMoney.com, it shall be available on Thursday and is priced at $2.99.
Is it any good? Well, the main selling point is this: Skyfire has a built in Flash video to HTML5 converter. Therefore, iPhone, iPod or iPad users will be able to enjoy Flash content. However, don’t get to excited as it won’t convert games or other non-video related content.
Android Browsers: Skyfire vs. Dolphin HD vs. Opera Mini vs. Mozilla Fennec
Guys at PCWorld benchmarked Skyfire 2.0, Dolphin HD, Opera Mini, Mozilla Fennec, Android 2.1 and Android 2.2 stock mobile web browsers.
As you can see from the results above, Opera Mini and Skyfire 2.0 took the lead, followed by Android 2.2, Android 2.1, Dolphin HD and lastly, Mozilla’s Fennec (Alpha) browser.
Interestingly enough, Skyfire 2.0 beats Opera Mini when loading pages directly from the web (they both compress content), while Opera Mini performed better during cached pages load test.
Skyfire Submitted to Apple’s App Store
Just as expected, Skyfire Team has submitted their mobile web browser into Apple’s App store and is awaiting approval.
If Apple approves the app, Skyfire would allow iPhone/iPad users to enjoy Flash content that is being transcoded into HTML5 via company servers.
According to press release, Skyfire Team followed Apple guidelines, including the use of a WebKit browser core shared with Safari, and h.264 adaptive streaming.
SkyFire for iPhone to be Submitted Soon
According to MobileCrunch, a company behind SkyFire will be submitting its mobile web browser to Apple’s app store early next week.
If SkyFire for iPhone/iPad is anything like other platform versions, users will finally be able to watch Flash videos or other media content.
Skyfire Labs, Inc. did not comment on the story.
Skyfire Halts Most Countries Support
Just a couple months ago, Skyfire has decided to expand its services and provide with an opportunity to download mobile web browser for people outside the U.S.
Well, it appears that company is backing up this decision. Starting from tomorrow (July 1, 2010), Skyfire will stop supporting countries other than UK, USA and Canada.
Users from other countries will receive the following message:
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