Mozilla won’t be bringing Firefox to iOS so long as Apple maintains its currently policy towards third-party browsers, according to the company’s VP of product, Jay Sullivan. The executive made the comments over the weekend as the ongoing SXSW gathering in Austin, Texas. He added that the company isn’t currently building a Firefox iOS app, and isn’t planning to. The problem, Sullivan noted, is that App Store rules prevent Mozilla from porting its rendering and JavaScript engines to iOS.
Third party browsers do exist on iOS, but have artificial limitations on what plugins and rendering technology they can use, often leaving them as little more than shells based around Apple’s own Safari browser. Safari is moreover the only possible default browser in the OS, which may deter people from picking an alternative. While Apple has sometimes defended its policies as necessary for security, critics and developers have complained that the company is more worried about blocking competition.
Perhaps the most successful third-party browser for iOS has been Google’s Chrome. The main feature of the browser is its ability to sync both bookmarks and tab states between browsers on several platforms, including not just iOS and OS X but Windows and Android.
