Ericsson Releases Browser for Free Download

THE newly developed internet browser from Ericsson Research has finally been made public for users to download for free at the Apple Store.

Known as Bowser, Ericsson said in a statement that the reason for making the Bowser and the underlying framework OpenWebRTC as free and open source is to further quicken the pace of innovation in the WebRTC community by providing developers with more choice and flexibility.  

The statement said that WebRTC provides a very simple way to build real-time voice, video and data applications adding that it consists of a set of API's and protocols that are being standardized within the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).  

According to Ericsson, the OpenWebRTC is built on the belief that the WebRTC standard will transcend the pure browser environment and that native apps implementing the same protocols and API's, will become an important part of the WebRTC ecosystem. 

It said that this is especially true on mobile platforms where native app distribution is often preferred over pure web apps.

Commenting on the development, Research Manager at Ericsson Research Stefan Ålund,  said: “Ever since releasing Bowser to the public in 2012 we have been asked to share our implementation. Today, we are not only releasing Bowser but also the underlying cross-platform WebRTC framework that we have developed and used internally at Ericsson Research over the last few years. ”

Ericsson Research is heavily involved in the standardization of WebRTC, and has been developing prototype implementations of the standard ever since its inception.

 Having at least two independent, interoperable implementations of a standard is that both IETF and W3C requires as part of the standards process.

Ålund continues: “The WebRTC standard is still evolving and developers are finding new ways of using the technology every day. Our engineers have built OpenWebRTC in a way that makes it super-simple to modify and extend, leaving room for even more experimentation with API’s and new features.”