Enterprise stalwart Research In Motion (RIM) unveiled the company’s latest, and faster BlackBerry browser, based on the WebKit open-source browser-engine.
The company co-CEO Mike Lazaridis flashed the new product at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona yesterday.
The existing BlackBerry Internet browser was widely felt as slow and non-compatible with many JavaScript-heavy pages. RIM’s BlackBerry has long been popular with corporate customers but not others. The slow browser was hindering its popularity among non-corporate customers.
The new browser is not available yet, and Lazaridis didn’t offer any firm dates either except saying “this year”. The consensus is that it could probably be in the market towards the end of the year.
The all-round better browser, the company hopes, would attract non-corporate customers too to the product.
The use of open source WebKit browser engine by RIM would give the Canadian company parity with such other players in the market as Apple and Google.
The introduction of a WebKit-powered BlackBerry browser has been expected since RIM’s purchase in August 2009 of Torch Mobile, a company specializing in WebKit-based mobile browser design.
RIM also announced a new free platform for small businesses named BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express. Aimed at deployments with fewer than 200 BlackBerrys, the new product provides BlackBerry syncing, push-e-mail, and remote file access to any small business using Microsoft Exchange 2003, 2007, and 2010. The software should become freely downloadable in March.
The new BlackBerry browser also supports both BlackBerry Widgets and JIL Widgets, according to RIM’s Director of Developer Relations, Mike Kirkup.
The new browser is seen as the next phase in RIM’s bid to transform its wildly popular Blackberry into a more robust Web-based applications platform similar to the Apple’s iPhone.