Samsung Electronics to Develop Its Own Mobile Browser

The industry said on September 23 that Samsung Electronics began developing a WebKit-based mobile browser. WebKit is an open source web browser engine, and it is also a base engine for Apple’s web browser “Safari” and Google’s Android browser.

The “Advanced Software Platform Lab” at the Samsung Information Systems America R&D Center located in Silicon Valley scouted a number of WebKit professionals and started the development of the WebKit-based mobile browser.

In February, Google launched “Chrome Mobile” which is more advanced than the existing Android browser. Chrome Mobile, which is usable from Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) up, moved Chrome to mobile. It is forecasted that Samsung’s browser would compete with Chrome.

According to market research firm StatCounter, Android (24.4%), iPhone (20.81%), and Opera (19.34%) accounted for about 65% of the global mobile browser market in August, and they were followed by Nokia, BlackBerry, and Dolphin.