Mozilla to piggy-back on Android with Firefox 4

Mozilla is targeting Firefox 4 at the growing Android smartphone platform as the company seeks to carve out market share in the battle with Apple and Microsoft.

Jay Sullivan, vice president of products at Mozilla, told V3.co.uk that the open nature of Android offers the best opportunity for Mozilla to push its newest browser into the mobile market.

"This year we are going to focus on Android. It has overtaken iPhone now, and is a pretty open platform in terms of what we're allowed to do. There are tablets, phones and other devices, so we think it's the best opportunity for us right now," he said.

Sullivan explained that Mozilla is determined to make Firefox the most successful browser on the internet, but said that the company is pleased to see the improvements Microsoft has made to Internet Explorer.

"We want IE to get to a stage where it's not holding the web back. With previous versions like IE6 and IE7, developers who wanted to write HTML5 have not been able to as they have to have an IE compatible mode too," he said. "We want Microsoft to keep improving as it's good for the web."

Mozilla is confident that Firefox can outperform IE, particularly as Firefox is compatible with a greater number of platforms.

"We think there are enough ways for us to differentiate and, because we can act independently, we can offer users better choice. Microsoft only developed IE9 for Windows 7 and Vista, but not XP," he said.

"However, we will offer Firefox 4 for XP users as we have no interest in forcing them to upgrade to Windows 7."

Sullivan also confirmed that Mozilla will change its development cycle after Firefox 4 to introduce improvements and updates more quickly.

"We are changing our development process so that, as we create things, we can get them out quicker. We're going to do smaller, quicker releases," he said.

Sullivan claimed that the capabilities of Firefox are being noticed in the enterprise, and that IBM made Firefox the firm's official browser for staff last year.

Mozilla released what it expects to be the final beta of Firefox 4 on Monday, bringing hope of a full release of the new browser early in March.