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Samsung preps mobile browser based on Apple’s WebKit

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 · 12:22 pm · 27 Comments

“The industry said on September 23 that Samsung Electronics began developing a WebKit-based mobile browser. WebKit is an open source web browser engine, and it is also a base engine for Apple’s web browser ‘Safari’ and Google’s Android browser,” Hwang Tae-ho reports for Korean IT News.

“The ‘Advanced Software Platform Lab’ at the Samsung Information Systems America R&D Center located in Silicon Valley scouted a number of WebKit professionals and started the development of the WebKit-based mobile browser,” Hwang reports.

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Note: The WebKit project was started within Apple by Don Melton on June 25, 2001. As of July 2012 it has the most market share of any layout engine at over 40% of the browser market share according to StatCounter. Apple made WebKit open source in June 2005.

Categories: News

Tags: browser, mobile browser, Safari, samsung, web browser, WebKit

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Comment Feed

27 Comments

Jeff

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - 12:28 pm · Reply

So not only do they promote their competitor in TV advertisements, now they will have to add the Apple trademark to their packaging.
Brilliant!
Who @ Samsung thinks up this stuff? Someone @ Apple wants to thank you for the continual FREE advertising…
Ballmer's left nut

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - 12:30 pm · Reply

Any closer and they’ll be right up Apple’s birth canal.
jer

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - 12:33 pm · Reply

very innovative , very original………..lol……..lol……..lol…….
peterblood71

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - 12:33 pm · Reply

What makes Shammy run? Apple do.
Apple is Always Right

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - 12:41 pm · Reply

You may have AIDS, Cancer, but never Samsung. I’m health.
Web is dying… long live the apps. assholes.
- Scoobydoozie
  
  Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - 12:45 pm · Reply
  
  Not understanding this. Want to try again?
  - Apple is Always Right
    
    Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - 12:54 pm · Reply
    
    Are you a Samsung jerk?
    - mossman
      
      Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - 1:02 pm · Reply
      
      Actually you just might be, with such broken English.
      
      As for the web dying? Forget it. The web is what SAVED all of us from Microsoft taking over the computing world, since it couldn’t be tied directly into the Windows architecture. They tried their best with Internet Exploder, but they let it stagnate and better browsers eventually ran over it.
Scoobydoozie

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - 12:43 pm · Reply

Very interesting……. Does this mean they are biting the hand that feeds them? Even they do not want google’s browser on Google’s Android amd want to cut Google’s profits from the data Google mines from it? Or are they building the blocks of their own OS ( doubtful)? I smell lots more trouble for Android and Samsung…..
- peterblood71
  
  Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - 1:00 pm · Reply
  
  Also lots of trouble for Google if everyone uses their own search, maps what have you and excludes Google. Google sit’s in it’s own shrinking ad revenue pool.
WTF

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - 12:51 pm · Reply

Not to nit pick but WebKit is based off of open source code originally created by the KDE project. But yes ‘WebKit’, the offshoot of that is the most successful browser platform.
- Jeff
  
  Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - 1:52 pm · Reply
  
  WebKit and the WebKit logo are trademarks of Apple Inc.
  Source: http://www.webkit.org
  - LordRobin
    
    Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - 2:28 pm · Reply
    
    Be that as it may, what WTF said was correct. WebKit was based on KHTML, the open source rendering engine for KDE’s “Konqueror” browser. Doesn’t make it any less the property of Apple, but its origins do require it to be open source.
    
    ——RM
    - Derek Currie
      
      Wednesday, September 26, 2012 - 3:16 am · Reply
      
      Yes LordRobin! Apple owns nothing of WebKit’s code. It is entirely open source because the original source of the code was open source. Two parts of WebKit are licensed under GNU LGPL v2.1. The third part is licensed under the BSD v2.0.
      
      I.E., it is entirely wrong to use the phrase ‘Apple’s WebKit’. However, Apple started this branch off the original KDE projects, named it and shepherd it. Therefore, Apple receive credit as one of its parents, but never owner.
      - Swordmaker
        
        Thursday, September 27, 2012 - 1:41 am · Reply
        
        No, Derek, Apple owns ALL of WebKit’s code and when some one adds to it, that code, under the license agreement, becomes part of it. Apple merely gives an open license to anyone to USE their intellectual property under the GNU license format in exchange for that. Apple is the copyright owner. It is specifically stated. Apple owns many other open source code software that they allow to be licensed under GNU, such as CUPS. You are wrong. Someone has to own any open source code, and be the licensor. In this case, it is Apple.
        
        Derek Currie
        
        Thursday, September 27, 2012 - 1:45 am · Reply
        
        Dear Swordmaker: GO READ THE GNU AND BSD LICENSES AND STOP SPREADING IGNORANCE.
        
        OK? Thank you.
Apple is Always Right

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - 12:57 pm · Reply

Chrome is webkit too. Why Samsung, why? Take care Google.
Webkit = Apple.
- Derek Currie
  
  Wednesday, September 26, 2012 - 3:17 am · Reply
  
  No. WebKit ≠ Apple. WebKit = open source. See my post below with links.
His Shadow

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - 1:47 pm · Reply

As usual, the completion copies the wrong things. They have flashy product introductions (Surface II) but no price or availability. They want to differentiate their pirducts, but thy do it by backing dead tech like Flash or relatively useless things like NFC. They want to pretend they are premium brands, but they shit out different versions of their phones every three weeks.
breeze

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - 1:47 pm · Reply

Just what the world is clamering for, a Samsung browser…
Lordthree

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - 1:49 pm · Reply

They’ll call it ‘Samfari’
Jeff

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - 1:59 pm · Reply

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Regular Reader

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - 4:38 pm · Reply

That is as ridiculous as writing to Ford to see what they plan to do about the rock chips on my hood. Clearly a defective hood.
Tom

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - 7:24 pm · Reply

the Samsung Information Systems America or SISA…
That means tit or nipple in Serbian.

LoL
Derek Currie

Wednesday, September 26, 2012 - 3:07 am · Reply

MDN said: The WebKit project was started within Apple by Don Melton on June 25, 2001.

Yes, but ‘started’ is an inaccurate word as WebKit was actually derived from a PREVIOUS open source project outside of Apple:

“The code that would become WebKit began in 1998 as the KDE’s HTML layout engine KHTML and KDE’s JavaScript engine (KJS).”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konqueror
Derek Currie

Wednesday, September 26, 2012 - 3:21 am · Reply

AHEM: Someone left an open bold HTML code symbol above and WordPress freaked and made everything thereafter bold. I shall now end the madness, I hope: Now the bolding shall (I hope) have ended. One must never be too bold-ed.
- Derek Currie
  
  Wednesday, September 26, 2012 - 3:22 am · Reply
  
  Well that didn’t work.