Skyfire chooses 30 beta testers from 3,000 applicants, talks up Webkit

Skyfire this afternoon shed a little light on where it's headed in the future with Android. You'll recall that the mobile browser company recently bought Kolbysoft -- maker of the popular Steel browser for Android -- and even more recently sought beta testers. Some 3,000 applications were received, and the lucky 30 testers have been notified. As for the future of Android -- and Webkit, thanks to the purchase of Kolbysoft, Skyfire says:

We see Android as a fast-rising ecosystem, with a rich, totally open developer environment, a healthy app market and a healthy advertising and search ecosystem. The Android OS has a tremendous amount of interest from handset makers and carriers, and also has a strong need for making the explosion of video more network optimized (Skyfire’s wheelhouse).

The bigger picture is that Webkit based smartphone browsers are proliferating, and we are aligning in that technology direction. We see a lot of need to make these browsers better, and believe that our cloud platform can be the answer. We’re looking at other Webkit platforms beyond Android already, and will share more information when we feel it’s appropriate.

If you're one of the lucky few how got in on the beta, congrats. We're all looking for good stuff to come out of the Skyfire camp. [Skyfire]