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Dana Blankenhorn on ZDNet asks an interesting question today: Where Should Mozilla Go From Here? It's hard to believe that the company's Firefox browser turns only five years old today. Stephen Shankland also weighs in on where Mozilla and Firefox should head next. I'm in favor of Mozilla becoming a more independent company, so that it can push its own initiatives in flexible ways, and I also think it has a huge opportunity in the mobile browsing space.

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.

We've written before about Fennec, Mozilla's innovative open source mobile browser. For quite a while now, Fennec has been in beta testing on Maemo-enabled Nokia Internet Tablets, but now there is an alpha version available for testing on Windows Mobile 6. It should put the pre-release browser in front of many more people, even though it is intended for developers and testers. You can find a download link and installation notes here. There is also a video of Fennec for Windows Mobile here, which is definitely worth watching.

If you've followed our coverage of Fennec,?the open source mobile browser that Mozilla is developing, you know that it promises to deliver quite a few innovative features. Mozilla has now delivered Beta 1 of Fennec, for use on Maemo-running Nokia Internet Tablets. JKOnTheRun offers up some good analysis of the first beta, including a video showing the slick interface features. The browser offers some of the best features found in Firefox: things like the Awesome Bar functionality, multiple tabs, and remembering passwords. The browser will also support Mozilla?s Weave platform, which synchronizes personal browsing data across multiple devices and even Flash video like that found on YouTube, they report. Check out their thoughts and the video. Even in its first beta version, Fennec looks pretty awesome--possibly a game-changer.

Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO of open source mobile solutions company Funambol, has a post up called The next sync: app sync. In it, he discusses sync features working out in the cloud, so that your status in any given application is carried across all your devices. As people increasingly work with hosted applications, more sophisticated mobile synching is indeed going to be required. Mozilla, Funambol and other players are at work on this idea, as are proprietary players. The results may be promising.

Last month we checked in on the alpha version 2 of Mozilla's open source mobile browser, dubbed Fennec. That alpha version has been in widespread testing on Windows, Mac and Linux desktop systems, in order to reach more developers and users than would be possible only on mobile platforms. Now, according to a list of milestones on Mozilla's site it looks like we'll see the official beta version of this very promising browser show up on February 27th. There are even more reasons to believe that this mobile browser could be a game-changer.

Back in November, we took note of the progress that Mozilla has made in ramping up its Fennec mobile browser.? Now, Fennec is available in an Alpha 2 test version for Windows, the Mac and Linux desktop users. Yes, it's a strange concept to test a mobile browser on desktop systems, but that's how Mozilla will leverage the largest possible community behind Fennec. Quite a few reports are coming in about how Fennec's interface works, and, although I intend to wait to use it in a more stable version, I'm very encouraged by what the earliest testers are saying. Could this open source project redefine how people think about mobile browsing?