The announcement is no surprise, with the announcement of Windows Phone 7 series expected to limit the device to just Internet Explorer on it’s mobile devices, much like Apple has done with it’s iPhone.

“We have been building a version of Firefox for Windows Mobile for quite a while, with the expectation that Microsoft would be doubling down in the mobile market and hoping that they would put out a great new mobile operating system” wrote Mozilla Mobile Team Technical Lead, Stuart Parmenter.

“While we think Windows Phone 7 looks interesting and has the potential to do well in the market, Microsoft has unfortunately decided to close off development to native applications.  Because of this, we won’t be able to provide Firefox for Windows Phone 7 at this time” continued Parmenter.

All hope isn’t totally lost, with Parmeter adding “while I hope that we do see Microsoft provide us with a way to build Firefox for Windows Phone 7, we will continue to focus on the things that we can control: building a great consumer product on both Android and Maemo.”

Firefox Mobile is almost a direct port of it’s big brother Firefox, with a completely redesigned user interface for touch screens.

The browser includes the awesome bar, a download manager, early HTML5 support, tabbed browsing, add on support, safe browsing, and is currently available in over 30 languages.

Firefox Mobile can be downloaded and installed on the Nokia N900, with more Maemo devices expected on the market soon.

Firefox Mobile RC 1 (formerly known as Fennec) is now available for Nokia’s Maemo mobile platform.

This includes devices such as the Nokia N900 and N810.

Firefox Mobile is essentially Firefox 3.5 under the hod, with a new graphical user interface for the mobile device. This means that you get the same rendering engine (supporting some HTML5 elements), the awesome bar, spell check, and a download manager.

Currently available in over 15 languages, an updated Windows Mobile version is expected in a few weeks.

A full list of changes can be found in the release notes, while the browser can be downloaded from the Firefox Mobile website.

Developer versions are also available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

“We’ve made big improvements to kinetic panning and added the ability to scroll iframes. A lot of work has been done to make our theme more robust, taking advantage of things like media queries to support various devices, orientations, and platforms which you’ll see more of in the next Windows Mobile release. Overall, this beta is a major improvement to previous Fennec betas” said Stuart Parmenter, Mozilla’s director of mobile engineering.

Full details of all changes, plus download links can be found in the release notes.

There have been many improvements since it’s early public alpha release, including TraceMonkey, Mozilla’s new JavaScript powerhouse.

This release also includes the Smart URL bar (also known as the “awesome bar”), and now supports tagging for bookmarks.

A full list of changes and features can be found in the Fennec release notes. Installation instructions for the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet are available.