Rumor has it that SkyFire plans to submit its smartphone browser technology to Apple (News - Alert) for the iPhone next week. The company reportedly recently started on final testing of the iPhone app, and is now close to ready to move on to the next step in the process.

If that’s the case, it’s good news for the fans of the SkyFire browser, which is revered for its ability to handle Flash video and other rich media in a very effective manner.

In fact, TMCnet’s own Rich Tehrani (News - Alert) has long been a fan of the technology. As Tehrani blogged back in May of 2008: “After downloading the new browser, I immediately visited TMCnet as it is a rich site with Flash, Java and all sorts of technologies which can make mobile browsers choke. To my surprise, TMCnet came up almost as fast as it does on a laptop with an EVDO card. This led me to surmise that the browser works with a back-end server handling compression, etc. In fact the limited beta program reinforces this assumption.”In the blog, Tehrani discussed his appreciation that SkyFire allows users to immediately see an entire web page, then quickly double-tap to zoom into a view where they can read comfortably. He also found appeal in its ability to allow the user to drag a finger up and down on the screen to focus on different parts of a web page.

Tehrani concluded by saying, “this browser is fantastic. It brings some of the best features of the iPhone (News - Alert) Safari browser to the world of Windows Mobile. The ability to take advantage of leading-edge technologies like Flash and others means you can actually use many sites which were previously off limits to mobile browsers.”