Firefox Plans To Not Make a Return to iOS

Even though there are a good amount of third-party browsers on the iOS app store, there is one browser app that will not be there. Over at SXSW interactive, Jay Sullivan, vice president of product at Mozilla, announced that their Firefox browser will not be on Apple’s mobile devices as long as Apple continues its “unfriendly attitude toward third-party browsers.”

Even though their Firefox Home app, an app that syncs the user’s history, bookmarks, and settings to their iOS device, appeared on the iOS app store in July 2010, the app was pulled/retired on September 2012 by Mozilla so that the company can focus on other products (like the Firefox mobile OS). Even though there are some interest to make a Firefox browser, the organization doesn’t plan to make a debut on iOS.

One of the main reason that the organization is not bringing a iOS version of the app is due to its limitations. Unlike similar smartphone operating systems, its sophisticated rendering and javascript engines cannot be ported to iOS; basically saying that they cannot build a browser that they want under Apple’s mobile platform.

Even though the organization has a mobile operating system, the phones announced that are running Mozilla’s mobile OS are all entry-level smartphone and its mobile browser use, combined, only holds less than 1 percent of the mobile browsing market, while Safari accounts for around 55 percent of the mobile browsing market. It is going to be hard for the company to have a stronghold in the mobile browsing market.