We've written about Fennec, Mozilla's mobile browser, a number of times. It's now in its fourth public beta, and GigaOm reports today that Mozilla CEO John Lilly wants it to be just as disruptive on mobile devices as Firefox is on the desktop. “We wanted to build a browser that did everything — Javascript, CSS, Flash, SVG, video and audio," says Lilly. "What that meant was we had to wait for a while for devices to get better to handle this modern browser.” Check out more at GigaOm.

Although Research in Motion (RIM) has more than held its own in the smartphone market, it's been plagued by the fact that both the iPhone and Android phones have better browsing experiences. In what looks to be a move to become more competitive in mobile browsing, RIM has acquired Torch Mobile, which has the Iris mobile browser, for an undisclosed sum. As CNet notes, Torch Mobile relies on the open source WebKit engine for mobile browsing, and this acquisition looks to be a smart move from RIM. Microsoft may also want to pay attention.

Both Google's Chrome browser and the iPhone browser rely on WebKit, among many other browsers that do, including the Palm Pre's. WebKit has, in fact, become one of the most influential of all open source platforms because of its ubiquity in browsers, and its flexibility. In addition to WebKit, some reports are coming in saying that RIM intends to include full Flash and Silverlight support in a new browser slated for 2010. These moves could make a big difference for the company in the mobile browser competition. 

As we've covered many times, one of the primary reasons for the growing success of Mozilla's Firefox browser is the thriving ecosystem of useful extensions for it, created by the user community. Mozilla is also generating increasing buzz with its innovative, open source mobile browser called Fennec. As we covered here, Fennec is available in an Alpha version for Windows Mobile, and you can see it in action in a video here. One of the big questions surrounding Fennec has been whether Mozilla will try to replicate the success of extensions for Firefox with useful extensions for Fennec, which could make it more flexible and extensible than other mobile browsers. Now, it looks like Mozilla has that goal squarely on its radar.