iOS users may finally see Mozilla’s Firefox browser come to their favorite devices, as TechCrunch reports that a Mozilla manager has admitted the company will be bringing the venerable browser to the iOS platform.
While Mozilla has always said in the past that they had no interest in bringing Firefox to the iOS platform, a rapidly declining installed base appears to have caused the company to see the light. “We need to be where our users are,” Firefox release manager Lukas Blakk tweeted this afternoon. “So we’re going to get Firefox on iOS.”
We need to be where our users are so we're going to get Firefox on iOS #mozlandia
— Lukas Blakk (@lsblakk) December 2, 2014
Mozilla has refused an official comment or confirmation, and no release date has been announced.
Mozilla has long held that Apple’s strict requirement that developers use its own WebKit web engine in the development of web browsers would not allow it to give users the same experience they have using desktop versions of Firefox. Mozilla uses its own custom web and rendering engines for Firefox.
Although Apple has eased its requirements somewhat with WebKit in iOS 8, it isn’t clear at this time what Mozilla has in mind to bring Firefox to the platform. The company would still likely be forced to use Apple technology in the development of the web browser.
While third-party web browsers cannot be set as the default browser under iOS 8, Firefox could still be attractive to users of other versions of the browser, due to its bookmark and password syncing.
