“Apple is too unfriendly to third party-browsers,” says Mozilla Vice President Jay Sullivan at South by South West Conference, and Mozilla Firefox is not coming to iPhones and iPads unless Apple loosens its third-party browsers? restrictions.
Apple Insider said, “CNET reported Sullivan’s comments, which came at a South by Southwest Interactive panel on Saturday. Sullivan says Apple’s current rules ? which forbid browsers that do not use Apple’s version of WebKit ? make it so that Firefox cannot build the browser it wants to for Apple’s platform.”
(Image Credit: James Martin/CNET)
Mozilla pulled Mozilla Firefox Home from the App Store in September of 2012, and the company is not building an iOS version of Firefox according to Mr. Sullivan and has no plans to do so.
The WebKit requirement of iOS doesn?t allow users from setting any third-party browsers as default.
David Dehghan of Dolphin Browser, a member of the panel, considered Apple?s policy as “inhibiting competition.”
“Competition is critical to our survival,” Dehgahn said. Sullivan and Mike Taylor from Opera Software ? which recently released a WebKit-based version of Opera for iOS ? agreed, saying that giving consumers browser choice was necessary in order to move the mobile web forward. Users suffer, they said, under Apple’s closed system.”
According to NetMarketShare, Mozilla holds 1 percent of the market share while Apple holds more than 55 percent of the mobile browser. However, Apple?s environment isn?t all that welcoming and favorable for third-party browsers.
On the other hand, Android allows users to set defaults. Is this an implication that Apple handicaps its iOS users when it comes to browsing experience?
Jennifer Van Grove of CNET said, “It’s a viewpoint that the general public might not share. Rosenblatt queried the audience to find out how many people were iOS users, and a majority of hands went up. By contrast, when he asked how many of them were suffering, just a few hands surfaced.”
How about you? Do you care whether Mozilla will come to iPhone or not? Why or why not?
