RIM Acquires Torch Mobile – WebKit Browser Coming To BlackBerry!

Posted by Mauricio on Aug 24, 2009 at 2:43 PM | Comments

If you’ve been waiting for a better BlackBerry Browser you’ll be happy to know that RIM has just acquired Torch Mobile, an experienced developer of WebKit solutions!

This is great, especially with the recent rumor that RIM will add support for Flash and Silverlight in the upcoming BlackBerry Browser.

Here is Torch Mobile’s announcement from their blog:

Torch Mobile is excited to announce that our company has been acquired by Research In Motion (RIM), one of the most renowned mobile technology companies in the world. Our team of developers will join RIM’s global organization and will now be focused on utilizing our WebKit-based mobile browser expertise to contribute to the ongoing enhancement of the BlackBerry® platform.

Torch Mobile’s team of highly skilled developers has been actively involved in Open Source development and includes contributors, Commiters and Reviewers of the WebKit project. As part of RIM, these developers will continue to be active participants in the WebKit development community.

Torch Mobile is the creator of the WebKit-based Iris Browser. I’ve included info about both WebKit and the Iris Browser after the jump.

Who’s excited for some new BlackBerry Browser action?!

About WebKit:

The WebKit engine provides a set of classes to display web content in windows, and implements browser features such as following links when clicked by the user, managing a back-forward list, and managing a history of pages recently visited. WebKit greatly simplifies the complicated process of loading web pages—that is, asynchronously requesting web content from an HTTP server where the response may arrive incrementally, in random order, or partially due to network errors. WebKit also simplifies the process of displaying that content which can contain various MIME types, and compound frame elements each with their own set of scroll bars.

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Iris Browser features: