Minimo was a disappointment for most Internet-compatible smartphone users, but this is not the real reason for which the developers at Mozilla are striving to port FireFox onto cellphones.

The real reason is that mobile Internet is really getting more and more popular and everyone’s favorite desktop/laptop browser hasn’t yet come up with a really good competitor for the mobile version of Internet Explorer or Opera. As mentioned before, Minimo was a disappointment for most users, but things will dramatically change soon.

In short, Mozilla developers plan to “rock” the mobile world with a fully functional version of FireFox that will support -besides the already famous tabbed browsing- the features that ensured the browser its success: extensions. Yes, those tiny cellphones in your pockets will eventually be able to do ordinary jobs like syncing your favorite URLs with a remote server or your own deskop, restore your desktop tabs for quicker navigation and so on.

In order to achieve just that, Mozilla has announced, through the voice of Mozilla engineering vice president Mike Schroepfer, that the mobile team will be expanded with full-time paid employees, besides the ones that are already involved in crafting FireFox for cellphones (Doug Turner and Chris Hofmann).

The first two prominent names that have joined the party are Christian Sejersen, who came to Mozilla on Monday from Openwave, and Brad Lassey, from France Telecom’s R&D department. Sejersen will lead the platform engineering effort for the mobile version of FireFox and will also head the Mozilla R&D center in Copenhagen, Denmark.

We should expect Mobile FireFox in 2008, but not before FireFox 3 for desktop comes out. With the official announcement from October 9, Schroepfer also confirmed that the Minimo project will be abandoned:

“Minimo was an experiment in mapping the desktop browser experience to a specific mobile context. While we don't currently plan to develop that project further, it has already provided us with valuable information about how Gecko operates in mobile environments, has helped us reduce footprint, and has given us a platform for initial experimentation in user experience.”