Anticipated for many months the Firefox mobile browser, dubbed "Fennec," is now available for download for Windows Mobile phones. Since my HTC WinMo phone is broken I can't download and test and will have to get a demo. Right now the download process is complex and likely to limit adoption, but that will change in the near term.

The browser is characterized as "pre-Alpha" (which is kind of a nonsense idea that just means "temper your expectations"). Next week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, we're going to see a number of Windows Mobile-related announcements. However, it's a better Internet browsing experience that's likely to make WinMo more competitive in the near term with platforms such as Android, the iPhone and the yet to be released Pre. It's ironic that help might come from Mozilla/Firefox, which has been steadily taking share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer on the PC.

Fennec is also a development platform that will allow for the creation of mobile widgets and applications much like Android or the iPhone, so it's very interesting from that point of view. It's also likely to more directly tie together the desktop and mobile browsing experiences in various ways. 

Fennec (when it becomes more widely available) represents a threat to Skyfire in particular, but potentially also to Opera -- although Opera Mini/Mobile have a large, installed international user base. 

I'm eager to see Fennec in action.