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The iPhone’s Safari web browser has ignited interest in browsing the “real web” on mobile devices, but it’s not the only mobile browser out there. Skyfire lets you see the web just as you would on your home computer but on a number of Windows Mobile-based devices. Today, it’s launching the beta version of its software for the Symbian platform as well.

Specifically, this version is built for the Symbian Series 60 (S60) platform, which is used on a variety of Nokia phones. Nokia recently purchased Symbian and plans to open the platform to spur development.

Skyfire mainly competes with the mobile version of Opera, Opera Mini, but Mozilla will soon be launching a mobile version of its Firefox browser as well. Skyfire claims it has an advantage in that, of all the mobile browsers on the market today, it’s the only one that supports “all Web 2.0 standards, including full support for Flash.”

It even notes in the press release that this means you can watch YouTube clips on your phone, and even cooler, Hulu videos. Hulu is the NBC and Fox-backed online video site that lets you watch premium television and film content for free.

The first 100 readers who go to this url: http://www.skyfire.com/sign-up/symbian/step2 and use the code Vbeat, will be let into the beta program. Note that this is only for US-based phones at this time.

Skyfire raised a $13 million second round of funding back in May led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. This followed an initial $4.8 million round. The company hired former Mowser cofounder Mike Rowehl to be its scalability architect last month.

Virgin Mobile USA has agreed to acquire Helio mobile phone division from SK Telecom and Earthlink for an investment that totals $50 million.

The deal is part of a consolidation trend in mobile. Nokia this week agreed to buy Symbian, the mobile phone software maker, for $329 million. And Microsoft agreed yesterday to buy Portugal’s Mobicomp. Mobicomp is a mobile software company specializing in the storage and backup of data.

The deal ends a high-profile attempt by South Korea’s SK Telecom to break into the U.S. market with a uniquely designed series of cell phones. But SK Telecom will own about 17 percent of Virgin Mobile USA after the deal closes.

It also sheds light on the strategy being pursued by Virgin Mobile USA to get out of its own mess. The U.S. market has turned brutal, and Virgin’s stock has plunged. Back in April, we reported Virgin Mobile USA was considering mass layoffs, or possibly raising money from a private equity firm. This deal suggests the company may try to buy itself out of trouble.

Warren, N.J.-based Virgin Mobile USA will issue 13 million shares at $8.50 a share, or $39 million, in exchange for an 80 percent stock. It will also assume $10 million in debt and other considerations. Both Virgin Mobile USA and SK Telecom will inject $25 million each into the combined entity.

The two companies hope they can reach a bigger scale together. Virgin Mobile has 5.1 million subscribers in the U.S., but Business Week points out that they are not on long-term contracts. Earnings were down 75 percent to $4.8 million in the first quarter. The company expects to lose about 130,000 to 160,000 customers in the second quarter. Why? In a word, it’s the iPhone.

Helio brings the company some 170,000 customers who spend about $80 a month. The combined entity will be known as Virgin. Helio had interesting models when it hit the market, such as the Helio Ocean model that could flip out a phone-like number keypad in one direction and a text-messaging alphabet keyboard in another.

Talks about an acquisition were rumored for some time. SK Telecom actually denied in May that Virgin Mobile was in talks to buy Helio. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter.

This could be a replay of Sprint buying Nextel. And it raises a question as to whether the MVNO, or mobile virtual network operator, model which Helio pursued (and even Disney failed at) can succeed in the U.S. MVNOs lease their wireless spectrum from other carriers.

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With Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android platform getting all the press these days, it’s easy to forget that another company, Nokia, is still by far and away the worldwide leader in mobile sales. It is a sleeping giant. And with the two noisy newcomers in its cave, it has awoken — and it’s hungry.

Not even a day after the buzz-worthy purchase of the location-based mobile social network, Plazes, Nokia has made a much larger move. One that will continue to evolve the mobile landscape: It has bought the Symbian mobile operating system, and will set it free.

With the creation of the Symbian Foundation, Nokia is creating a new royalty-free open platform for mobile development. Joining them in this are AT&T, LG, Samsung, STMicroelectronics, Texas Intruments and Vodaphone. Yes, the big boys are coming out to play.

It should be very clear to anyone following the industry what this is aimed at: the Google-created Open Handset Alliance (OHA), and its platform, Android.

Trumpets sound the call of war.

From the press release:

“Ten years ago, Symbian was established by far sighted players to offer an advanced open operating system and software skills to the whole mobile industry”, said Nigel Clifford, CEO of Symbian. “Our vision is to become the most widely used software platform on the planet and indeed today Symbian OS leads its market by any measure. Today’s announcement is a bold new step to achieve that vision by embracing a complete and proven platform, offered in an open way, designed to stimulate innovation which is at the heart of everything we do.

It’s likely not just Android and the OHA that Nokia and the others fear. It’s also a closed operating system run by a very powerful phone: the iPhone.

Apple is gearing up to launch its device in over 70 countries around the world. In the many of these places it will be encroaching upon territory Nokia has held for a long time.

To be clear, Nokia already owned a large percentage of Symbian, but now it has bought the remaining shares to take total control. The all-cash deal is said to be worth around 265 million Euros, which is just over $400 million.

Such is the price of war.

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[photo: New Line Cinema]

1) Yahoo’s Yang lambasted by Congress for China actions
2) Social networks eclipse email in the UK
3) Yet another “semantic” search engine launches
4) Coming to a gas station pump near you: Google maps
5) Coming to online games this year: Google ads
6) Mobile web browser Opera Mini 4 out now
7) Forbes aquires majority stake in political blog site RealClearPolitics.com
8) Google-led Android mobile phone software has a long way to go, says rival

Yahoo’s Yang lambasted by Congress for China actions — When a Yahoo lawyer testified to Congress last year that the company hadn’t played an active role in the jailing of Chinese dissidents, the issue was allowed to blow over. Then an organization called Dui Hua dug up the actual documents served to Yahoo China by Chinese police. It’s pretty clear now that Yahoo did know what was going on, and Congressional leaders aren’t happy about it. CEO Jerry Yang and general counsel Michael Callahan were yesterday called “moral pygmies” during hearings in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. That committee is also urging a bill that would criminalize cooperation by US companies with anti-democratic governments, a significant threat to internet companies looking to expand in Asia. More from the WSJ here (image courtesy of Getty Images).

Social networks eclipse email in the UK — A Hitwise study shows that social networks are now receiving more traffic than web-based email services like Hotmail and Gmail in the United Kingdom. That’s mostly due to strong growth in the traffic of social networks, but there has also been a modest decline in traffic to email sites. Predictably enough, the surge toward Facebook and similar sites is led by users aged 18-34, with the fogeys opting for the more familiar web mail.

Yet another “semantic” search engine launches — TrueKnowledge may or may not be worth its weight in 0’s and 1’s, but it at least has the gamut of buzzwords: Natural language processing, semantic search, internal knowledge bases, etc. Unfortunately, the UK-based company isn’t allowing anyone to touch the goods, including ReadWriteWeb, which has a review and video of the site here.

Coming to a gas station pump near you: Google maps – The Internet-connected gas pumps, made by Greensboro, N.C.-based Gilbarco Veeder-Root, will display the maps to help drivers find local destinations. Notably, the destinations will be hand-picked by pump owners and won’t include a way, for the time being, for people to type in addresses and get directions. Google Maps is also available for mobile phones, specifically so you can get directions. At this time, the maps won’t include ads. AP story here.

Coming to online games this year: Google ads – Google will start beta-testing with casual gaming startup BunchBall Games later this month, embedding 15-second video-style ads that appear before and within some of Bunchball’s games. It will offer PC-based ads in December, starting with cult-classic game Psychonauts. Om has the scoop, here. Bunchball is also a member of OpenSocial.

Mobile web browser Opera Mini 4 out now — details here.

Forbes aquires majority stake in political blog site RealClearPolitics.com — press release here.
Google-led Android mobile phone software has a long way to go, says rival – John Forsyth, vice president of strategy at mobile operating system company Symbian has harsh words for Android. He told the BBC is yet another attempt to introduce a Linux-based operating system.

About every three months this year there has been a mobile Linux initiative of some sort launched. It’s a bit like the common cold. It keeps coming round and then we go back to business. We don’t participate in these full stop. We make our own platform and we are focused on driving that into the mobile phone market at large ever more aggressively.

Symbian sold software licenses for 20.4 million smartphones in the last quarter of 2007.