Skyfire submits its Flash-capable mobile browser to the App Store

Skyfire is a mobile browser for Windows Mobile, Google Android and other platforms which promises faster browsing, and a full web experience on mobile devices. It does this by using server-side compression. In other words, you enter a URL, and the Skyfire servers will look at the page, decide whether it would look better on your device after the servers to some data crunching, and then send the results along to your mobile device. While it sounds like that would slow things down, the truth is most of the time you can’t tell the difference — and when viewing websites with a lot of Flash or other data that can tax your phone’s resources, it could speed things up.

In fact, Skyfire offers one of the best ways to view Adobe Flash content on mobile phones that don’t normally support Flash. Sure, not all Flash-based web sites work with Skyfire, but many do.

Now Skyfire wants to bring its magic to Apple’s iOS platform. On the one hand, there’s reason to think that Apple could actually approve the app. While early third party browsers were typically rejected, Apple did approve the Opera Mini browser earlier this year because unlike mobile Safari, it uses server-side compression to offer a different kind of browsing experience… much like Skyfire.

On the other hand, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has made it clear repeatedly that he’s not a fan of Adobe Flash. So it’s possible Apple could reject the app simply because it doesn’t want to see Flash content on mobile devices, and instead wants to pressure web publishers to use HTML5 and other multimedia standards.

On the third hand (I’m almost done here, I promise), Skyfire essentially tanscodes Flash content into HTML5 for delivery on the iPhone, so who knows? Maybe Apple will be cool with that.

Anyway you can check out a preview of the iPhone app after the break. There’s no telling if or when it will be available for download.

via Laptop Magazine