Blackberry goes Webkit with Iris browser pick up

With Blackberry’s aquisition of Torch Mobile today (horrible website btw!), Webkit literally owns the mobile browser space.  This is important as the browser becomes the platform for a growing number of mobile web apps – which Torch Mobile alludes to in its press release:

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.

All of the leaders in the Mobile space are now using Apple’s open source Webkit platform, which is only a few years old.  Blackberry, Nokia’s Symbian, Android, Pre and iPhone are now all using Webkit by default.  Windows Mobile is the odd one out.  Interestingly, Torch Mobile made a Webkit browser for WM6 – it was actually touted on tis website more than its Blackberry browser.  Perhaps this was another reason for the purchase.